Hey Monte Schlacko, dear Slagorg by Susanne Kriemann explores the intersection of nature, industrial history, and architecture. The book is rooted in photographs taken on “Monte Schlacko” – a former slag heap in Siegen, now a nature reserve. Mosses, lichens, and pioneer plants growing on industrial residue form the botanical and metallurgical core of the work.
These images connect to a large-scale installation on the façade of the former Galeria Karstadt department store, where layered prints on textiles and paper echoed geological strata. The architectural surface becomes a site of sedimentation – where concrete, slag, and images overlap, evoking the Anthropocene as a living environment.
Archival floral photographs from the 1930s and recent film footage from Kharkiv expand the narrative: plants as living archives, survivors, witnesses.
The term Slagorg – combining “slag” and “organism” – symbolizes life emerging at the boundary between nature, industry, and human intervention.
