ART INTERVENTION NEBELWALD
(Fog Forest)
It was a beautiful experience in the forest of Grünheide near Berlin—within the context of the GRÜNHEIDE resistance movement, which opposed a Tesla expansion project involving the clearing of a large forest area in order to extend the company’s industrial complex.
The intention was not to produce urgently needed, contemporary small vehicles for increasingly overloaded urban environments—or perhaps public transport solutions—but instead to continue manufacturing oversized, outdated vehicles: the kind of “fat cars” (Fett-Karren) that artist Erwin Wurm uses as a term for his sculptural car works, referring to these symbols of excessive individual mobility.
Vehicles that no longer correspond to the needs of the present.
A further 100 hectares of this valuable forest were threatened by clearance. For three days, we painted in the forest in solidarity with the resistance movement.
At first, the weather was summery and warm; then it turned cold—even snow fell.
On 24 April 2024, we presented the paintings created there at the resistance camp.
The coat of arms of Grünheide features a turtle. It symbolises the European pond turtle, a native species of the region, and highlights the importance of the area’s precious water resources within a protected natural landscape. Berlin’s water supply is closely connected to the fragile ecological balance of this region.
To ignore this sensitivity is dangerous, irresponsible, and outdated.
In this highly critical moment of accelerating climate change, there is no need for “status vehicles”—so-called fat cars—that represent a culture of excess rather than a sustainable future.
