Ecologies of Visibility I

In 1986, Sigmar Polke transformed the German Pavilion at the Venice Biennale into an experimental image environment in which color pigments, photosensitive substances, and climatic conditions interacted. Under the title Athanor, he brought alchemical ideas of an active nature into dialogue with photographic and painterly processes: light, heat, humidity, and chemical reactions became forces that generated images.

Forty years later, a two-day program at C/O Berlin takes Polke’s Biennale pavilion as its point of departure to consider the continuing relevance of this experimental framework. How does our understanding of images change when the processes that produce them are shaped by environmental conditions? What does it mean to see images as carriers of ecological change, technological intervention, and persistent contamination?

The program is part of Sigmar Polke. Athanor NOW, an international research and education project of the Anna Polke Foundation, and also forms part of the After Nature . Ulrike Crespo Photography Prize, presented by C/O Berlin and the Crespo Foundation. In her exhibition, prizewinner Susanne Kriemann reflects on another fortieth anniversary—the Chernobyl nuclear disaster in April 1986—by examining the afterlives of toxic residues and radioactive materials, as well as the traces they leave in landscapes, bodies, and images.

Over the course of one evening and one afternoon, artists, curators, and scholars will come together in conversation. Taking Polke’s experimental system and its connections among hermeticism, photography, chemistry, and material research as their starting point, they will consider how images emerge when material transformation, rather than representation, comes to the fore; when visibility results from processes that themselves remain invisible; and when artistic practice follows the material instead of imposing a predetermined form on it.

The program was initiated by Hans-Christian von Herrmann (TU Berlin, Department of Literary Studies) and Katja Müller-Helle (HU Berlin, “Das Technische Bild” research center).

Program

Fri, Sep 25, 2026

18:00–18:30 
Welcome
Katharina Täschner, Curator, C/O Berlin
Language German

Introduction
Hans-Christian von Herrmann, TU Berlin /
Katja Müller-Helle, HU Berlin
Language German

18:30–20:00
Toxic Substances
Susanne Kriemann, Artist /
Eva Wilson, Curator, Skulptur Projekte Münster
Language German


Hans-Christian von Herrmann is a scholar of literature and cultural studies. He has been a professor at the Institute for the History of Philosophy, Literature, Science, and Technology at the Technical University of Berlin since 2011. In his research and teaching, he focuses on the interplay of knowledge, technology, and aesthetics in the processes of modern literary and artistic production.

Katja Müller-Helle is a scholar of art and media studies. She heads the research group The Technical Image at both the Institute for Art and Visual History and the Centre for Cultural Technology at Humboldt University of Berlin. She has been a fellow at the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles and at the Bibliotheca Hertziana in Rome. Her research focuses on digital image cultures and image censorship, the history and theory of photography and visual evidence.

Susanne Kriemann is an artist and professor of Code & Image at Karlsruhe University of Arts and Design. Her work is grounded in an expanded understanding of the photographic document, exploring landscapes as recording systems of human-induced processes while bringing together ecological, archaeological, and geological perspectives. Her work has been exhibited internationally, including in Graz, Leipzig, Vienna, Hamburg, and Berlin, as well as at numerous biennials.

Eva Wilson is a curator at Skulptur Projekte Münster 2027, with a focus on publications. As a writer, editor, and curator, she is primarily concerned with publishing as an artistic practice. She previously worked for, among others, documenta 14 in Athens and Kassel, Schinkel Pavillon in Berlin, and Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary in Vienna. Together with Anna Gritz, she co-edited Margaret Raspé. Automatik; with Adam Gibbons, she edits the book series “ ” (quotation mark quotation mark) at NERO.