Jakob Kudsk Steensen: Wetland

Have you ever wondered what once existed under the streets where we stand? Many modern cities were built on top of wetlands. If we look close enough, traces of those lost ecosystems remain. In Berl-Berl, Jakob Kudsk Steensen reimagines Berlin’s forgotten wetlands as a singing, digital swamp. Part of an ongoing body of work, the work takes its title from the Slavic word for “swamp,” the origin of Berlin’s name. It combines ecological research and local folklore and songs—once used as a way of mapping this terrain and documenting its stories—to bring forth a new kind of landscape.