Within ＿matter Festival 2025

18 - 20 JULY 2025 / 12:00 – 20:00

ZK/U BerlinSiemensstr. 27, 10551, Berlin, Germany

We invite you to experience »Blazing Heath/Heideglühen«, a multi-channel audiovisual installation that examines the complex history and contested afterlife of former military training sites in Brandenburg, Germany. Following the Soviet troop withdrawal in the early 1990s, these sites were transferred to nature conservation organizations under the »Naturerbe« (Natural Heritage) initiative, which aims to preserve their original state — a notion subject to interpretation. Shaped by decades of tank maneuvers and gunfire, these landscapes bear the scars of destruction, yet paradoxically foster the resurgence of species once thought extinct. Now functioning as »living laboratories«, they serve as sites for studying species adaptation and experimental conservation practices. 

By integrating data-driven, visual and sonic monitoring, »Blazing Heath/Heideglühen« encourages you to encounter these uncanny landscapes. The work examines how the toxic legacies of military occupation are made (in)visible and repurposed within scientific knowledge production. As emerging technologies and methodologies are tested in these extraordinary environments to advance biodiversity goals, the work interrogates the histories embedded within the data itself — asking how past violence shapes contemporary conservation. Just as the physical terrain of these former training grounds retains the traces of its militarized past, so too do the datasets derived from them, carrying the specters of history into future applications.

Free admission.