This is the version from Ludwig Bechsteins collection of German Legends from 1853: Bei der Insel Usedom ist eine Stelle im Meere, eine halbe Meile von der Stadt gleichen Namens, da ist eine große, reiche und schöne Stadt versunken, die hieß Vineta. Sie war ihrer Zeit...
Vineta is a mythical sunken city off the German or Polish North Sea Coast. I was suprised to find out that the first mention of Vineta can be found in the travel writings of Ibrahim ibn Yaqub from around 960 CE. According to historians, Ibn Yaqub was a traveler and...
German born and UK based visual artist Mariele Neudecker creates aquarium installations of forests, houses or vessels since the late 1990's. Her so called "tank works" are three dimensional landscapes that evoque German romanticism, scientific artefacts as well as the...
When cities are deserted, their existences can be traced back by the types of earths in the ground for centuries. Geologists call the type of earth created by human settlement dark earth. Dark earth is rich in charcoal and botanic fibres, the left overs of human...
In japanese culture, disasters are commonly interpreted as a call and chance for renewal. The then governor of Tokyo Shintaro Ishihara published a statement only two days after the Tsunami of March 2011 calling "the disaster a punishment from heaven because Japanese...
Japanese culture has a long history of natural disasters, mostly earth quakes. Also the so called Triple-Disaster of 2011 was caused by an earthquake, which caused a Tsunami and then the explosions at the Fukushima atomic plant. In Japanese culture the catfish...
A project of speculative mapping and audio art about sea level rise in the Mediterranean: Link
To counter the global sea level rise, several initiatives have formed to block seas off from the global water flow. The idea behind it: If you control the global water flow, you could control the sea level locally without having to tackle the problem globally. Of...
In her essay on the motive of Mount Vesuvius, Valerie Hammelbacher traces the beginning of the image of disaster in art history back to the Britsh enlightment and the philosophy of physico-theology. More often referred to as natural theology, this school of thought...
Divine punishment is an ever recuring theme in urban disasters. However, sometimes the situation does not quite fit the morals. In 1906 an earth quake hit the San Franscisco region. Fires broke out in the city, 3.000 citizens lost their lifes and 80% of the city's...
