dinsdag 14 april 2015

Expo about Pier

The Vanishing of Villages  will be part of the exhibition Mine Mapping in Atelierhaus Aachen which will open Sunday, April 19th at 17.00 P.M.

I will show an artistic translation of my explorations in the three vanished villages Pier, Weiwerd and Wollseifen. For some years now I have been witnessing the destruction and vanishing of Pier which balanced for a long time on the edge of this huge browncoal quarry of the RWE Power AG near Weisweiler. Pier is no more.

Weiwerd is no more either: scheduled for demolition in the 1970s to allow the industrial area of Delfzijl harbour to be expand. Which never happened. Recently new plans were made to revive the village by creating ‘Brainport Weiwerd’. But so far despite the fancy name and because of the economic backdrop ‘Brainwierde’ only exsists virtualy.



The third vanished village is the former hamlet of Wollseifen near ‘Ordnungsburg Vogelsang’.
After WWII, the inhabitants of Wollseifen were given three weeks to leave their village. In the next years nearly the complete settlement had been gunned down by the British Army as part of a military trainingground. In 2005 the training area closed and the Wollseifen and surroundings were handed over to Germany again. Now the inhabitants who once were forced out, are free to enter the village again as it is now a place of remembrance in the middle of the Eifel National Park.



Fascinating, isn't it?