Coalscapes (by Florian Manz, Julius Schrank and Lucas Wahl)
Over the past few years, the controversy surrounding the mining of climate-damaging lignite has become a dominant subject in the media. Movements such as Fridays for Future, Ende Gelände and Extinction Rebellion have added fervour to the discussion. The Hambach Forest is now a familiar name all over Germany. At this time, around 25 per cent of Germany’s energy resources come from the conversion of fossil fuels into electricity. The world’s largest excavators are transforming the open-pit areas in the Rhineland, central Germany and the Lausitz region in the east of the country into moonlike terrains. As these areas eat their way through the land, people and nature must make way. Florian Manz, Julius Schrank and Lucas Wahl have filmed the Rhineland’s lignite territory with a 360-degree camera. The images move past enormous excavator shovels, conveyer belts and rugged landscapes to a tree-house village occupied by forest-dwelling protestors in the Hambach Forest, and to the Neurath power plant.