Hey Monte Schlacko, Dear Schlagorg

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.