Benedikt Terwiel in collaboration with ANOHNI (DE/US)
Land Before Last
Single-channel video, sound installation, 17:58 min
2024 / 2025
Still image, Land before Last, 2024 / 2025
Land before Last was filmed in the digital terrain model of the Netherlands. All human development, vegetation and any life are erased from the topographical terrain data, so that the traces of human settlement can only be recognised in the imprints they have left on the terrain. As a result, the landscape appears as a vast archaeological site.
The accompanying audio track of sound and text, which meanders through the space and drives the viewer’s thoughts in different, sometimes associative directions, is a collaboration with the artist ANOHNI.
It remains unclear where you are on the timeline and in which direction you are looking – the future or the past. However, the topography of furrows and scars reveals the enormous changes and adaptations that humans have made to the landscape over centuries of building, altering and expanding their habitat. It is no longer possible to say what caused its disappearance. But the erasure of all life in Land before Last feels like an erasure of history.
We are experiencing a landscape of memory that has been stripped of its witnesses, of its narratives and histories. It is precisely this complete emptiness that calls us to reflect on what this seemingly unreal, but by no means fictional, landscape tells us about our present.
Benedikt Terwiel is an artist based in Berlin. His work explores the technological and methodological developments associated with the cultivation, appropriation and production of land. He is interested in landscape images, asking what cultural historical narratives they are and have been associated with, and how they can be reflected in today’s environment. He has participated in exhibitions at Kunsthalle Bielefeld, Bundeskunsthalle Bonn, and Museum Unter Tage in Bochum, as well as in festivals such as the European Media Art Festival at Kunsthalle Osnabrück and the IMPAKT festival in Utrecht.
ANOHNI is an artist and musician based in New York City. Her recent album, My Back Was A Bridge for You To Cross (2023) issues the challenge “It’s Time To Feel What’s Really Happening.” ANOHNI has had solo exhibitions at The Kitchen, New York; Nikolaj Kunsthal, Copenhagen; Kunsthalle Bielefeld, Germany; and the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles. With her group Antony and the Johnsons, ANOHNI performed with symphonies and in opera houses around the world including Sydney Opera House, Royal Opera House London, Teatro Real in Madrid, and Carnegie Hall in New York.