Philip Gaißer has been living in the North of Germany for quite some time now. In a region without mountains and therefore, for someone who comes from a hilly area, in a landscape without too many exciting landmarks.
At least if we ignore the spectacle of high and low tide. The ice age seems to have flattened the ground here at high speed. Ultimately, the earth movements left behind large deposits of limestone, which can be found just below the earth’s surface today and the extraction of which is necessary for the production of cement.
Cement factories are occasionally built in the immediate vicinity of lime deposits – as is the case in Lägerdorf. These then stand alone in the flat landscape, as the proximity to the raw material is what makes this product so profitable. Gaißer discovered the lime pit by chance and, tired of the sight of the flat landscape, made his way down into the deep open space.
The Saturn chalk pit was closed in the early 00s and a new open-cast mine was opened further west, even closer to the factory. The reason for the closure was water seeping in from the surrounding swampy terrain and running down the chalk slopes. The construction boom of the 1980s had led to the operating company mining the lime far into the water-bearing layers due to increased demand and the water ingress became uncontrollable. Today, a dense network of sewer base pipes transports the incoming groundwater out of the pit day and night, giving the impression of constant busyness, even though no one has been working here for a long time.
In his work, Gaißer frequently deals with cycles that occur in nature, how man appropriates them, develops them further and transforms them. The work shown here, entitled Marker, also reflects this idea. Why he understands the human need to erect buildings of great longevity in connection with his work only really becomes clear to me when he tells me about the water pumps in Halle-Neustadt. He has been commuting regularly to the city on the Saale in central Germany for many years for professional reasons. The planned city, whose striking silhouette of prefabricated buildings always appears suddenly in the equally flat opencast mining landscape as the one to the north near Lägerdorf, was built in the 1960s and stands on swampy ground. Massive lignite mining in recent years has led to large quantities of groundwater increasingly undermining the city. A system of pumps runs day and night, also in Halle – otherwise the city would sink.
There are hills in the disused open-cast mine – just no real view. The straight horizon of the surrounding landscape disappears when you are at the bottom of the pit, and once down there you are surrounded by uniform white. Only the weather changes the color of the light on the chalky ground. The question of a different perception of landscape quickly faded into the background when Gaißer discovered fossils in the white of the pit during his numerous visits. He began to collect the belemnites at the bottom of the pit, or rather the spoil heap. The search for and collection of belemnites can be understood as the central motif of Gaißer’s exhibition at Le Bailli.
Belemnites are the fossilized calcite skeletons of cephalopods. The cuttlefish populated the entire globe between 358 and 66 million years ago and have been declared a marker of the Jurassic period. As a marker, belemnites define a certain period of the earth’s history – comparable to the plutonium inclusions of the firstnuclear tests, which could mark our age in the near future. To define something as a marker, it is not sufficient to detect it in different places, for example in the layers of the earth. Rather, it requires a very specific, defined place where the corresponding marker, for example belemnite, can be detected. Lime deposits offer excellent conditions for this due to their ability to seal things hermetically. Lägerdorf may therefore well be seen as a marker for Philip Gaißer’s work.
Belemnites are not normally of interest to fossil collectors. Plenty of them are found fossilized in the limestone pits of Europe. In Gaißer’s pit, the fossils can be collected from the spoil heaps after a light rain. According to a statement by Gaißer, he was initially unaware of what the projectile-like rocks actually were. Their artificial shape and the individual differences in their surfaces made him wonder. Even in past centuries, at least as far as tradition can tell, belemnites were interpreted and named differently by people.
The elongated shape gave the belemnite fossils their name, which goes back to the Greek word Bélemnon, meaning projectile. Among the Germanic tribes, they stood for disaster and were called Thunderbolts. In southern Europe they were called Devil’s fingers. If they were found in large numbers in a newly developed settlement area, this area was declared uninhabitable. In today’s Tyrol and south of the Alps, they were known as Albschloss. They had the function of a lucky charm that was supposed to open all doors on the way through the mountains. Known as Lynx stone, because it was said that the urine of the lynx was responsible for their shape, they had a fertility-bringing function to the Romans. Today, the first association would probably be that of a projectile, just as it was for the Greeks. Possibly because we are so very familiar with the technical shape of a cartridge.
Gaisser has since left the pit again. However, he continues to discover belemnites on the paneled walls of airports, in the sandstone floors of museums, in the windowsills of show houses and on hikes when the thaw sets in, and the gutter of a hayloft has a hole from which the meltwater can escape in a controlled manner.
In this case, however, it is a question of the correct exposure setting on the camera so that the shape can be created on the sensor. Belemnite-like impressions can even be found in window panes from the last century, before the industrial production of glass began. But that’s another story, a new one.
Recently, the cement factory’s mining company has been in the process of reopening the abandoned Saturn pit in Lägerdorf for lime extraction. Now, however, as underwater mining with more modern dewatering systems and controlled by sensors. Work has already begun on repairing the conveyor belt from the factory site to the mine.
