An abandoned gas field in the Lutte led to a search for the mining history of Twente, a rural area in the east of the Netherlands.
Traces of salt and gas production are connected to wastewater injections from oil extraction wells in Schoonebeek.
Slow processes have been set in motion in these places; glacial movement formed this landscape; oil, gas, salt extraction have set in motion developments of which the consequences only manifest themselves many years later.
Engelberts went looking for the traces that the fossil industry has left behind in the Twente landscape by visiting specific locations, doing archival research and conducting discussions with various stakeholders, including residents of the area and geologists.
The result can be seen in the museum: an installation in which the constant extraction of fossils fuels, a sense of geological time and domestic traditions of the region are connected.
The exhibition leads with a poem:
Exploration
All these meters of
soil,
sand,
salt,
clay,
halite,
anhydrite,
porous rock,
pressured gas,
black stripes of coals,
orange iron tinted layers,
oil,
all stacked in wooden boxes,
shelfed in a warehouse.
violence
energy
power
Millions of years in the palm of your hand,
a palm closing,
crushing,
soft sand trickling on the floor.
Special thanks to:
Roelie Seinen, de Zandstrooiboerderij Schoonebeek
Frank van Ruitenbeek, Universiteit Twente
Arjan Dijkstra, Universiteit Twente
Mine
4 channel video installation with drill and poem.
Ja-knikker - Pump jack
Duration: 12’00” (loop) –
Format: 1080P/ 16:9 / Colour
Credits:
Concept, direction & production: Tanja Engelberts
Camera: Tanja Engelberts
Edit: Rento van Drunen
Audio: Marcel Imthorn
Salt mine
Duration: 12’00” (loop)
Format: 1080P/ 16:9 / Colour
Credits:
Concept, direction & production: Tanja Engelberts
Camera: Tanja Engelberts
Edit: Rento van Drunen
Audio: Marcel Imthorn
Glaciaal tapijt – Glacial carpet
Duration: 12’00” (loop)
Format: 1080P/ 16:9 / Colour
Credits:
Concept, direction & production: Tanja Engelberts
Camera: Marcel IJzerman
Edit: Rento van Drunen
Audio: Marcel Imthorn
4000 meters naar beneden - 4000 meters down
Duration: 60’00” (loop)
Format: 1080P/ 16:9 / Colour
Credits:
Image: Image of a drill core of De Lutte field, 1986. © Central Kernhuisgeological service of the Netherlands
Concept, direction & production: Tanja Engelberts
Motion graphic design: Rento van Drunen
Audio: Marcel Imthorn
Photographs by Lotte Stekelenburg
In the 1950s, the Rhône River was declared dead. With the development of hydroelectricity, the river changed drastically in post-war France. New canals took over the old river, dikes were built against flooding, the river was slowly dammed in the name of science and technology. Furthermore, with its fast flow and cool temperatures, the Rhône provided an ideal setting for the development of several nuclear power plants and chemical industry sites. The river became a hydraulic object, the boundaries between nature and technology slowly blurred.
The river – once the symbol of an uncontrollable force – had been conquered, but how would the river best describe itself? Inspired by Bruno Latour's The Parliament of Things, in which the philosopher argues that laws and politics should not be centered only around people, but should respond to all things and life forms, Tanja Engelberts examines the Rhône from an animistic point of view. She tries to imagine what it’s like to be a fast-flowing river, slowly filling with Anthropocene-era artifacts over a 600 kilometer stretch. A landscape steeped in chemical waste, that’s slowly disappearing due to climate change.
With a fast current, the Rhône originates in the glaciers of Switzerland, meandering to the south of France and ending in the Mediterranean Sea. Along the way, her waters absorb chemicals in the Rhône valley: sediment-carried fluoroalkyl (PFAS), radionuclides (radioactive material), plastic waste and pesticides. The sediment of the Rhône acts as a preservative; Roman artifacts over 2000 years old are still found there. For Tanja Engelberts, this silt became a symbol of the river’s power and its hidden history.
The artist made photographs from the perspective of the river itself, focusing on the meeting of water and riverbank – sometimes a natural barrier, but more often stone and concrete. On the riverbanks, Engelberts found a clay-like substance that she decided to work with, having tested it at attraction terrestre, a local ceramics studio in Arles. Where the Rhône has been subdued by hydraulic and nuclear technology, Engelberts wanted to adopt a technical and distant approach to her own way of working. Organic material and mechanical process intertwine here: the artist laser cuts photographs, creates reliefs, presses clay into them, and glazes her ceramic landscapes with clay from the Rhône.
This project was produced as a commission from FOTODOK (Utrecht, NL) and developed as a site-specific research during the art residency The Shelter (Arles, FR), with support of MIAP foundation and Stroom (The Hague, NL)
In the 1950s, the Rhône River was declared dead. With the development of hydroelectricity, the river changed drastically in post-war France. New canals took over the old river, dikes were built against flooding, the river was slowly dammed in the name of science and technology. Furthermore, with its fast flow and cool temperatures, the Rhône provided an ideal setting for the development of several nuclear power plants and chemical industry sites. The river became a hydraulic object, the boundaries between nature and technology slowly blurred.
The river – once the symbol of an uncontrollable force – had been conquered, but how would the river best describe itself? Inspired by Bruno Latour's The Parliament of Things, in which the philosopher argues that laws and politics should not be centered only around people, but should respond to all things and life forms, Tanja Engelberts examines the Rhône from an animistic point of view. She tries to imagine what it’s like to be a fast-flowing river, slowly filling with Anthropocene-era artifacts over a 600 kilometer stretch. A landscape steeped in chemical waste, that’s slowly disappearing due to climate change.
The river breathes out. Organic materials which fill the water are slowly broken down through chemical processes, creating carbon dioxide (CO2). What sound does a river make when exhaling? Does this sound change as the river is poisoned, distorting and fading from its natural state?
Throughout the summer of 2022, Engelberts followed the river from the Mediterranean to its source in Switzerland, charting its transformations, its journey, and its many voices. Engelberts later collaborated with sound artist Liz Harris to form sensitive soundscapes from ambient noise combined with field recordings. Together, they created a poetic means to reflect on how a poisoned river might possibly exhale.
This project was produced as a commission from FOTODOK (Utrecht, NL) and developed as a site-specific research during the art residency The Shelter (Arles, FR), with support of MIAP foundation and Stroom (The Hague, NL)
We exhale – video
Duration: 19’28” (loop) –
Format: 4K / 16:9
Colour
Credits:
Concept, direction & production: Tanja Engelberts
Camera: Tanja Engelberts
Drone: Jonathan Pierredon
Edit: Rento van Drunen, Tanja Engelberts
Colour grading: Marcel IJzerman
Sound design: Liz Harris
Audio mix: Rafael Anton Irisarri
Decom is a portrait of a decommissioning yard, the place where oil and gas platforms come to die. The huge structures are lifted from the sea and are broken apart, recycled and re-used on land. The film is devoid of any people; the machines have taken over to clean up the scraps of man.
The scrapyard has its own flow, the film has the same rhythm, it is very slow and then all of a sudden there is a burst of violence. You also see this cycle at sea, when an oil or gas field reaches the end of production. Operators stimulate the field through fracking, it means the pressure drops, a violent explosion occurs and the oil flows back up, then they repeat the process.
The film oscillates between very tranquil wide shots, that introduce this otherworldliness, close ups that show the violence and the machine-perspective where the viewer becomes part of the violence.
Decom
2021
Duration: 14’56” (loop)
Format: 4K / 16:9 Colour
Credits
Concept, direction & production: Tanja Engelberts
Camera: Marcel IJzerman, Tanja Engelberts
Edit: Rento van Drunen, Tanja Engelberts
Colour grading: Marcel IJzerman
Sound design: Rento van Drunen, Andreas Kühne
Audio mix: Andreas Kühne
Special thanks to:
All the workers at Sagro Decommissioning Vlissingen
Rijksakademie van Beeldende kunsten
Gregoriaans Koor Utrecht
Photographs: Sander van Wettum
The world offshore is a world unknown. At least for most of us. Fascinated by the flashing lights in the distance, like the call of sirens on the horizon, Tanja Engelberts (NL) became interested in the offshore oil and gas industry. Forgotten Seas is the accumulation of six years of research, a journey across the North Sea.
The work is a photographic exploration of Engelberts’ archive, consisting of documentary photographs taken during her trips on maintenance vessels and on the platforms, as well as historical images she collected over the years. The photographs are combined with written anecdotes about life on an oil rig. Stories of people she met on the sea and her own travel experiences.
Upon the waves we go. From optimism and the feeling that man had conquered nature in the fifties, to a more critical view on the fossil fuel industry and its future: the destruction of the first platforms. Each chapter has its own visual language and design, highlighting the raw and complex structures on the sea while evoking a sense of awe and guilt.
Forgotten Seas is a testament of seventy years of gas and oil drilling in the North Sea, an industrial landscape that is slowly disappearing.
This project is made possible thanks to the generous support of:
All the crowd funders through Voor de Kunst
Mondriaan Fonds
Jaap Harten Fonds
Niemeijer Fonds
Prins Bernhard Cultuurfonds
Charema Fonds Gemeente Den Haag
Stichting Stokroos
When a platform is removed, nothing remains visible for the bare eye above the water surface: nothing refers to the history of the place. With this work, Engelberts imagined what people would see in the future if they would fly over that seascape, searching for signs of the past. It is filmed with a drone that is searching for something, which contributes to the feeling of trespassing and secrecy. The work combines this film footage with a DIA slide show with names of the platforms, the sounds of the projector gives both rhythm to the film and also references the type of machines used in the beginning of the offshore industry. For the uninitiated viewer, the names on the slides seem regular bird names, but moving through the slides more familiar names like Brent spar reveal the reference of the period in which Shell UK has given platforms the names of birds. With species extinction, are the drones replacing birds in this world?
During Rijksakademie OPEN the installation was accompanied by Forgotten seas. A twenty-minute life performance of a sound piece developed with musician and artist Marcel Imthorn. The piece consists out of field recordings Engelberts made during trips on maintenance ships, oilrigs and platforms, together with sounds recordings from the Forties field platforms made in the seventies. It depicts a life cycle on the Northsea, from first encounter till the decommissioning of a platform.
For a related series with the same title, prints of a seemingly empty sea were overlaid with a reflective material, once illuminated by a flashlight you can read the platform names. Treasure finder, Barnacle, Indefatigable, Vanguard all names of fields on the North Sea. The reflective surfaces referencing the name signs on platforms, always visible at night.
Credits:
Title: Future Maps For Hollow Places
Format: 4K / 16:9 Colour, sound
Duration: 03:43” (loop)
Edition: 3 + 2AP
DIA slideprojection with text, steel
Title: Forgotten Seas
Sound performance with Marcel Imthorn
Duration: approx. 20 min.
Courtesy: Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten
Photographer: Sander van Wettum
Barnacle
Digital print on hahnemühle photo rag, screenprinted with reflective ink
100 x 64 cm
edition 5 + 2ap
Indefatigable
Digital print on hahnemühle photo rag, screenprinted with reflective ink
70 x 45 cm
edition 5 + 2ap
Treasure finder
Digital print on hahnemühle photo rag, screenprinted with reflective ink
70 x 45 cm
edition 5 + 2ap
Vanguard
Digital print on hahnemühle photo rag, screenprinted with reflective ink
70 x 45 cm
edition 5 + 2ap
Hollow is a portrait of an artificial Dutch island. It is shaped like a ring dike and serves as a dumping ground for contaminated sludge from Dutch waters that contain toxic substances.
In this first video work the camouflage techniques that depict the island as an idyllic nature reserve are explored, as well as the monotony of actual islands making and the dumping of dredged material.
The island is a vehicle for Engelberts to develop a speculative vision of the future in text and image in which she, by thinking through geological time, wonders what happens to processes that people set in motion, but which have consequences that will manifest themselves long after our own deaths.
Credits
Title: Hollow Duration: 13’22” (loop)
Format: Apple prores / 16:9 Colour
Edition: 3 + 1 AP
Drone operator: Erik Hageman
Production support: Louke Wijntje and Elleke Hageman
Sound: Marcel Imthorn
Editing: Rento van Drunen
Special thanks to:
Rijksakademie van Beeldende kunsten
Rijkswaterstaat midden-oost Nederland
Title: Geography of a hollow
Medium: Polymer photogravure
Size: 23 x 26,5 cm
Edition: 5 + 2AP
Installation images:
Rijksakademie van Beelendende kunsten, Amsterdan, NL
Photo: PH.GJ. van Rooij
Intensive Places, Tallinn Photomonth Biennial, Contemporary Art Museum of Estonia, Tallinn, EE
Photo: Paul Kuimet
Mimicry of Hollows , The Fifth Floor, Tokyo, JP
Photo: Ujin Matsuo
Looking over the riverbanks that surround the Athabasca Tar Sands, it is hard to comprehend that this far stretching landscape with its sticky dark earth is of any value. However, 4 million barrels of oil are extracted out of this soil daily; it contains Canada’s largest oil fields.
The fastness of this industry is only visible from the air. First, you fly over the boreal forest when in the midst of it you suddenly arrive at enormous, open mines; the sheer scale of the mining, the pits, the tailing ponds and machinery reveal themselves.
Aerial shots were taken above the boreal forest and the tar sands. They depict the wild landscape that is torn by human ingenuity. This is reinforced by images that reference historical photography showing man’s challenge to extract earth riches.
Actual tar sand is used to print various images. The texture hereof stands as a tangible memento for a landscape lost by destruction. Some of these prints have the sand scraped off, leaving only a ghostly trace of a landscape. Other prints have used the dull black carbon of petro coke (a heavy residue from the oil refining process), depicting the rational industry at work.
Ideas for this work were formed by texts from Man and Nature by George P. Marsh. He was the first to write about man-made climate change, and the discomfort that comes with irreversible consequences, but also voicing the excitement of technological development and the resilience of nature.
‘Natural arrangements, once disturbed by man, are not restored until he retires from the field, and leaves free scope to spontaneous recuperative energies; the wounds he inflicts upon the material creation are not healed until he withdraws the arm that gave the blow. ‘
500 metres afar, night-time
2021
light box, Dura clear print, museum and satin glass, LED, plug, wood, steel
41 x 72 cm
Production cycle
2021
Carrousel projector, 80 slides, arduino, steel
60 x 60 x 150 cm
Photographs: Sander van Wettum
Cities of desire, is a first presentation of an ongoing project about the North Sea and its economical landscape.
The harsh conditions on the North Sea make the offshore industry almost the ultimate symbol of man overcoming nature. Artificial cities of concrete and metal lie in an apparent empty sea. They leave a lot to the imagination.
After decades of prosperity and activity the North Sea landscape is changing. The low oil and gas prices and the exhaustion of wells have left some of the platforms abandoned. Questions about the future rise: are we looking at monuments, decaying junk or places of new possibilities?
The exhibition consists of pictures that were taken during a two weeks residence at the maintenance ship Kroonborg (NAM), combined with archival material from different offshore operators (Shell, Total, Wintershall). The exhibition shows photographs - Sometimes up-close, sometimes seemingly floating by- of North Sea platforms printed on sheeted steel. In the pictures the horizon shifts up and down. The scratched steel on which the images are printed comes to life in the sunlight and suggest a previous usage. There is also a film of a solemn platform in which the only movement comes from the sea creating the feeling that time has no hold on these structures.
The exhibition and work title refer to Italo Calvino’s Invisible cities. In this book Marco Polo talks about his travels with Kublai Kan. While speaking of imaginary cities, this conversation expands like a game of chess. The descriptions of these Invisible cities act as metaphor commenting on modern day life. They encompass the emotional and the mathematical, and show a sense of fear and longing. Thoughts that are very appropriate to this project.
___________________
The exhibition was accompanied by 500 metres afar, a mini symposium. This name is a derivative of the nautical law that prohibits ships to sail closer than 500 meters from a drilling or production platform. It also represents the fact that we as an outsider never reach these platforms. The symposium was led by Esther van Duin (neuroscientist, former chairwoman De Nationale Denktank). After an introduction to the subject and the exhibition by Tanja Engelberts, Sybe Visser (Swift Drilling) talked about his extensive offshore experience working in this field for the past thirty years. Lorenzo Frankel (Follow the money) spoke about the Dutch government’s lack of decisiveness to decommission redundant platforms. The mini-symposium was rounded up by a group discussion exploring the future of the North Sea, its environmental issues and new forms of energy production.
Materials:
UV print on steel
Dimensions: H x W x D
Objects: 170x80x50 / 130x60x50 / 155x40x50 / 165x35x50 cm
Wall based work: 29 x 35 cm
Wyoming is a place of transition. The lands photographed here originally belonged to native, nomadic people. Then arrived colonists looking for gold and prosperity, later companies drilling for raw and valuable materials. When the mines ceased to bear wealth, they looked still deeper to unearth riches below ground - and turned to fracking.
At first glance perhaps the land photographed here - Bozeman’s trail - doesn’t seem to be a very distinctive place. Void of houses, people and traffic, a vast emptiness opens up. John M. Bozeman, this work’s protagonist and namesake, was the first to cross the land in search of gold. His digging was the start of human imposition on these lands; the title lends the work this story of place.
Like a map, the image – dived – unfolds. The technique of etching somewhat bites an image into the surface of the plate and is itself a form of erosion - akin to the blight on this land. The shimmering, golden surface alludes to the craziness of the gold rush and the copper and brass mines surrounding Bozeman's trail – its reflection transforms the land from positive to negative. At once present and a shadow, the story of Bozeman’s trail appears tethered to its surface.
* Excerpt from a interview for Prospects & Concepts @ Art Rotterdam with Noor Mertens, Curator Boijmans van Beuningen
Materials:
Etch on brass
Dimensions: H x W
Bozeman's Curse ( untitled I )
200 x 80 cm
Bozeman's Curse ( untitled II )
200 x 80 cm
Bozeman's Curse ( untitled V )
200 x 80 cm
Bozeman's Curse ( untitled III )
200 x 80 cm
Bozeman's Curse ( untitled IV )
200 x 80 cm
“You stand there, braced. Cloud shadows race over the buff rock stacks as a projected film, casting a queasy, mottled ground rash. The air hisses and it is no local breeze but the great harsh sweep of wind from the turning of the earth. The wild country -indigo jags of mountain, grassy plain everlasting, tumbled stones like fallen cities, the flaring roll of sky- provokes a spiritual shudder. It is like a deep note that cannot be heard but is felt, it is like a claw in the gut...
...Other cultures have camped here a while and disappeared. Only earth and sky matter. Only the endlessly repeated flood of morning light. You begin to see that God does not owe us much beyond that.”
― Annie Proulx, Close Range
Materials:
Etch on brass
Dimension:
H x W
20 x 40 cm
20 x 40 cm
20 x 20 cm
By Nigel Frank, Curator Clifford Chance Collection.
The island series reflects a fascination with corporate architecture, particularly the concept of the ‘Silver Aesthetic’, a 1970s coinage that described a way modern architecture could blend with the historical backdrop. A concept that was given an ideological content by Japanese architects in the 1980s, who called it the poetics of ‘almost nothing’ and saw their architecture as ‘symbolism of the void’.
Using Canary Wharf as an exemplar, Engelberts believes the concept has been lost, replaced with a type of global architecture that is visually appealing but raises concerns about cultural identity. Engelberts asks the question: Can Canary Wharf, in all its functionality, be a place of wonder and contemplation?
The Clifford Chance Art Group, who selected Tanja Engelberts (b. The Netherlands, 1987) from a shortlist compiled by the University, responded to the clarity of her proposal. A sculptural intervention into their working environment that both introduces an ethereal, fleeting quality and reflects on the specifics of their office's location at Canary Wharf; the moments of beauty and isolation she captures in her photographs of the office's surroundings. 'Viewers of her work will respond to the unseen beauty that surrounds us everyday', they said.
Materials:
Digital print on silk, Aluminium
Dimensions: H x W x D
The Island, Periphery
160 x 400 x 100 cm
The Island, Centre
30 x 40 x 50 cm
The Island, Altitude
190 x 100 x 150 cm
Photographs by Paul Tucker
‘Every landscape is a hermetic narrative: finding a fitting place for oneself in the world, is finding a place for oneself in a story’
- from Lucy Lippard, Lure of the local
‘Place’ is a collage piece made out of hundreds fragile ceramic tiles, each tile printed with a delicate photograph. The work shows us personal snap shots from a family album, empty landscapes where sometimes a figure emerges. ‘Place’ is about recollection, remembering places once visited and the fragility of those memories.
Materials:
Silkscreen print on ceramic, rope
Dimension:
H x W
170 x 160 cm