A site-specific ecological installation exploring transformation, biodegradation, participation and the entanglement of human and natural systems through sustainable material processes.
Minaminals II – Earth to Earth (2018) is a site-specific ecological installation by Kirsten Wechslberger that combines sustainable material research, participatory practice, public intervention and process-based sculpture. Installed within a historical fountain in Hellersdorf, Berlin, the work consisted of fifty biodegradable animal sculptures made from self-developed bioplastic, sand and wildflower seeds. Positioned as if slowly emerging from the fountain and dispersing into the surrounding neighbourhood, the installation unfolded as a temporary ecosystem shaped by weather, growth, public interaction and time.
Rather than presenting sculpture as something fixed or permanent, the installation existed in a continuous state of transformation. Small turtles, birds, snakes and snails appeared fragile and unsettled within the urban environment. Some seemed to migrate outward into the surrounding public space, while others appeared already suspended between formation and dissolution. The work deliberately resisted stability. It behaved less like a collection of static objects and more like a living material process in which sculpture, environment, microorganisms, plants and human presence continuously interacted.
This instability forms the conceptual core of the work. Minaminals II – Earth to Earth challenges traditional understandings of sculpture as monument, preservation or permanence. The sculptures were intentionally designed to weather, soften, crack, decompose and eventually reintegrate into the environment from which they emerged. Their disappearance was not understood as damage or failure, but as an essential phase of the artwork itself.
The installation developed from Wechslberger’s ongoing Minaminals series, which began in 2017 and later expanded into works such as Minaminals III – The Soil We Live Of and Merging Layers. Across the series, sculpture is approached not as an isolated object but as a temporary condition within larger ecological and social systems. An early project description defined Minaminals as “a conceptual installation project that focuses on ephemeral, experimental, sustainable processes, materials and themes.” The work explicitly positioned itself within the fields of Sustainable Art, Ephemeral Art and Conceptual Art, while developing its own distinct approach to ecological materiality and transformation.
Material research plays a central role within the installation. The sculptures were produced from a self-developed bioplastic recipe combined with sand, natural additives and wildflower seeds. Different material mixtures, water ratios, soil compositions and sand types were continuously tested to explore how the sculptures responded to weather conditions, moisture, sunlight and biological activity. The project described the works as “100% sustainable sculptures,” emphasising sustainability not only as a thematic concern but as an ethical and structural principle embedded within the production process itself.
This focus on materiality distinguishes Minaminals II from many environmentally themed artworks that continue to rely on industrial or synthetic materials. Here, sustainability extends across the entire life cycle of the work:
material sourcing, production, installation, weathering, decomposition and reintegration into natural systems. The sculptures do not symbolise ecological cycles from a distance. They physically participate in them.
The integration of wildflower seeds into the sculptures was particularly significant. The seeds were intended to germinate directly from the decomposing bodies of the figures, allowing growth and decay to exist simultaneously within the same material structure. Organic life would emerge through decomposition. Sculpture would gradually become soil, while new plant life would begin to occupy the dissolving forms. Through this process, the installation approached the “Circle of Life” not as metaphor alone, but as a visible ecological transformation unfolding over time.
The work also introduced an important participatory dimension. During the Erdfest event in June 2018, visitors were invited to produce their own sculptures using bioplastic and sand. These objects could either be taken home or incorporated directly into the installation itself. As a result, the work remained intentionally unfinished. Public participation became part of the installation’s evolving structure, opening the boundaries between artist, participant and environment.
This participatory framework reflects a broader shift within Wechslberger’s practice from object-centred production toward relational and socially embedded artistic processes. Human interaction was not treated as secondary audience engagement, but as an active material layer within the work itself. The installation therefore functioned simultaneously as sculpture, workshop, ecological experiment and collective learning environment.
Equally important was the project’s pedagogical dimension. Visitors did not only encounter finished objects but were introduced to the full material cycle behind the work:
the cooking of bioplastic, material mixing, experimentation with natural ingredients, shaping processes, drying, decomposition and ecological reintegration. Discussions around sustainability, biodegradation, ecological systems and cycles of growth and decay became integrated into the artistic experience itself. Knowledge production and artistic production operated together as interconnected processes.
This educational aspect reveals a recurring characteristic of Wechslberger’s wider practice. Art is not approached as isolated representation, but as a relational situation capable of generating participation, reflection and embodied understanding. The work proposes that ecological awareness emerges not only through observation, but through direct physical engagement with materials, processes and environments.
The installation’s relationship to public space became increasingly significant after much of the work was destroyed approximately two weeks after installation. Sculptures were damaged, removed or taken away entirely. Initially experienced as shocking, this destruction later became integrated into the conceptual reflection surrounding the project. The accelerated disappearance of the work exposed questions surrounding vulnerability, authorship, control and the unpredictability of public environments.
Rather than understanding these interventions solely as loss, the project incorporated them into its evolving narrative. Human interference became another transformative force within the ecological cycle already embedded in the installation. Some figures appear to have been taken by visitors and carried into private contexts, extending the work beyond its original location. The project therefore accepts appropriation, damage, disappearance and fragmentation as possible components of its material and social history.
The work also raises broader institutional questions concerning value, legitimacy and visibility. The accompanying video documentation reflects critically on whether artworks become meaningful primarily through institutional framing or whether public space might allow forms of engagement that are more immediate, unstable and socially embedded. In this sense, Minaminals II – Earth to Earth not only examines ecological systems but also investigates the conditions under which art itself circulates, survives and acquires meaning.
A particularly important aspect of the installation is Wechslberger’s conscious distinction from earlier forms of Land Art that relied on large-scale intervention into landscapes. Instead of domination or extraction, Minaminals II emphasises ecological sensitivity, biodegradability and coexistence with existing environmental systems. The work does not impose itself onto nature through force or permanence. It attempts instead to collaborate with temporary ecological processes already in motion.
Art historically, Minaminals II – Earth to Earth can be situated within ecological art, sustainable art, participatory installation, process art, conceptual art, site-specific practice and ephemeral sculpture. The installation shares affinities with artistic practices that reject permanence in favour of transformation and that understand artworks as evolving systems shaped by time, participation and environmental conditions. Yet the work also occupies a distinct position through its integration of ecological material research, public pedagogy and biodegradable sculptural processes.
Within Wechslberger’s wider artistic practice, Minaminals II marks an important consolidation of recurring themes that continue throughout later works:
ecosystems as metaphors for social structures, instability as methodology, decomposition as transformation, participation as co-authorship and material itself as an active conceptual agent. The installation reveals an artistic practice increasingly concerned not with producing fixed objects, but with creating temporary conditions for interaction, reflection and change.
Ultimately, Minaminals II – Earth to Earth proposes a radically different understanding of sculpture and permanence. The work does not attempt to resist time. It enters time fully. Growth, weathering, microbial activity, participation, disappearance and reintegration are not external threats to the artwork but the very conditions through which it exists. What remains is not a stable object, but the trace of a temporary ecological and social encounter in which art briefly became part of a living cycle.
Kirsten Wechslberger 