Format: Installation, activated once a day

Year: 2018

Materials: batteries, concrete, steel, ashes

Size: 160 x 160 x 150cm

Weight: approx. 1,5t

Further information: +/- one week assembly time

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ALKALI is an installation which functions as a network of thoughts and therefore its reading is decentralized.

The core ideas of the art piece are:

– ecological awareness illustrating the Anthropocene with its environmental issues and offering a nonviable, unfeasible usage alternative as a trigger for individual and collective creative thinking concerning handling of resources and waste

– research on the medium of battery and exploration of its technological limits, its scientific and historical background, together with its etymology

– a mirror of society, portraying social structures in the original form of an ancient pyramid, questioning means, behavior and authority, while exposing the dualistic meaning of “power” as in appearance versus function

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ALKALI is conceived as a ziggurat with four levels owned by batteries, a base containing ashes and a summit where once a day a piece of metal is melted, showing the huge amount of energy that is still enclosed in these batteries, which are considered to be waste.

Those two main materials, batteries and ashes, are sourced from local recycling centers and energy-producing facilities. This confronts the viewer with its own personal waste.

The process of the installation consists of thousands of old batteries which are gathered, measured and sorted based on their remaining voltage, in order to later all be connected and built into ALKALI. 3048 are selected: 1984 AAAs for the fourth level, 864 AAs for the third level, 160 Cs for the second and 40 Ds for the first.

The arrangements of the levels, consisting of walls and platforms, each with their own different quality and battery society, envision different social groups. Starting with the working class, packet on top of each other along the walls, producing all the electricity used for the artwork, ending progressively with the selected few which are advertising themselves as “extra-power” or “super long-life”, but are for decoration purposes only.

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The artwork was exhibited at Pasquart Art Center, part of the exhibition “ANEW” in Biel, 2019, CH

Assistance by Jan Weber and Oona Baumann.

Supported by Entsorgungshof Fellerstrasse, EWB – Energie Wasser Bern and Electrical Engineering and Information Technology BHF. Many thanks to Mr. Di Maio, Thomas Bücherer, Prof. Max Felser.

Many thanks for the help and support to Werkstatt HKB: Florian Weiss, Adrian von Niederhäusern, Urs Gehbauer, Kathrin Eggimann and Karin Lehmann.

Also many thanks for the patience and inspiration of thoughts to Hans-Rudolf Reust, Andrea Gohl, Roman Kurzmeyer, Valerian Maly, Michael Harenberg, Tine Melzer, Anselm Stalder and Andi Schoon.

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