92U
Film Duration: 4 minutes 10s
Genre: Experimental Documentary
Format: Digital / Immersive Sound / Mixed Media (Satellite Imagery, IR video & Field Audio)
92U is an experimental documentary short responding to fieldwork conducted in Bad Schlema, a former spa town in Saxony’s Erzgebirgskreis district, later transformed into one of the world’s largest uranium mining operations. The film reflects on the enduring legacy of this extractive activity and the vast, remediated terrains that remain. These “heap landscapes”, formed from over 7.7 million cubic meters of uranium mining waste, are now capped, covered with mineral soil, and reforested into curated landscapes of apparent stability.
Through a blend of infrared recording, archival material, and footage from within the former mine, 92U brings these human-made environments into conversation with their past and possible futures. Infrared imagery expands our visual perception, revealing unseen contours of the reengineered land, while archival clips evoke both the intensity of past activity and the nostalgia expressed by local communities.
Ambient recordings of birds singing, leaves rustling and trees swaying are interjected with the bursts of Geiger counter recordings, pulling the viewer into a deeper awareness of the unseen presence of radiation. These sonic interruptions serve as a reminder that remediation is not erasure, and that curated nature overlays a still-active legacy. Still images from inside the mine include – abandoned tracks, corroded pipes, stagnant waters, and oxidised minerals. These linger beside the altered surfaces, exposing a layered dialogue between memory, containment, and transformation.
At once meditative and critical, 92U considers how landscapes shaped by uranium function. This site might soon be re-entered for lithium, continuing cycles of extraction beneath a surface that appears, for now, quiet.
Film Duration: 4 minutes 10s
Genre: Experimental Documentary
Format: Digital / Immersive Sound / Mixed Media (Satellite Imagery, IR video & Field Audio)
92U is an experimental documentary short responding to fieldwork conducted in Bad Schlema, a former spa town in Saxony’s Erzgebirgskreis district, later transformed into one of the world’s largest uranium mining operations. The film reflects on the enduring legacy of this extractive activity and the vast, remediated terrains that remain. These “heap landscapes”, formed from over 7.7 million cubic meters of uranium mining waste, are now capped, covered with mineral soil, and reforested into curated landscapes of apparent stability.
Through a blend of infrared recording, archival material, and footage from within the former mine, 92U brings these human-made environments into conversation with their past and possible futures. Infrared imagery expands our visual perception, revealing unseen contours of the reengineered land, while archival clips evoke both the intensity of past activity and the nostalgia expressed by local communities.
Ambient recordings of birds singing, leaves rustling and trees swaying are interjected with the bursts of Geiger counter recordings, pulling the viewer into a deeper awareness of the unseen presence of radiation. These sonic interruptions serve as a reminder that remediation is not erasure, and that curated nature overlays a still-active legacy. Still images from inside the mine include – abandoned tracks, corroded pipes, stagnant waters, and oxidised minerals. These linger beside the altered surfaces, exposing a layered dialogue between memory, containment, and transformation.
At once meditative and critical, 92U considers how landscapes shaped by uranium function. This site might soon be re-entered for lithium, continuing cycles of extraction beneath a surface that appears, for now, quiet.