February 2025

Both a survey and a speculative exercise, Juliane Tübke’s ‘Kin (12099)’ (2023) is above all an itinerary of care. A series of spray-painted, unburnt clay sculptures modeled from discarded items found in the streets of the industrial area of Tempelhof Ost, among which tires, jeans, fruits, basketballs, or tiles, ‘Kin’ stages an analysis of a once prolific industrial district through its waste. At the same time, it raises a series of questions about the role of trash in transforming a landscape, ultimately placing it as an active element in a dysfunctional ecosystem.

Since areas such as Tempelhof showcase the waste urban centers wipe out and hide, contrasting with the pristine, well-functioning structures and infra-structures of city centers, they may enable a vision of opposites. In these places, isolation tends to leave space for a cruder set of rules in the public areas, which are normally dirty. Streets such as Teilestraße - the main street running through the district - are popular among people who drive there to dump their trash. Sidewalks are a hotspot, a final destination populated by all sorts of objects, from car parts to broken household appliances.

If functionality may be seen as the core of a perfect urban model, trash is most likely its most visible pore – and that is the pore ‘Kin (12099)’ (2023) points at. The delicate spray-painted sculptures, often displayed on a steel grid, are normally presented by Tübke as if they were a blend of archival interest and sheer monumentality, suitable for both analysis and contemplation. Indeed, waste has an interesting potential as a sociological and political element. Tübke explores it as she delves into its speculative biography, thus raising a series of questions: what is dumped? Why is it dumped? Who decides that it should be dumped and that the cycle is over?

The point is, in fact, that the cycle is not over. Mostly, the idea of trash is coated in a sense of doom, which is probably related to a general feeling of uselessness towards it. As objects cease to fulfill a specific function, uselessness quickly becomes repugnant. Like everything else, trash rots. Still, shelf life and decomposing are not the same. The end of a cycle is really just the end for those dumping. Once discarded, trash still plays a role in the ecosystem. It interacts with it as it resists erosion, disappearance, and integration. As she crystallizes these objects by putting them on a pedestal, Tübke seems to be proposing a closer look at that resistance and toxicity. In this regard, her strategy seems rather simple: to slow down and make these objects noticeable, to immerse in a different, caring angle.

Moreover, the move is not fundamentally different from what Tübke has done in the past. In projects like ‘Weathering’ (2020), for instance, she has focused on the interactions between human and non-human actors, the latter becoming active co-creators within the framework of her creative process. Rather than treating water as a passive element, she uses it as a ‘Co-Creator’ in her visual and textual works. This is essentially the idea of ‘Kin (12099)’ (2023), where discarded objects are removed from their final destination and subjected to analysis, considering them as actors in the transformation of the Tempelhof industrial landscape.

This resemblance is neither a coincidence nor a mere formal affinity. As Tübke places the urban landscape in the sphere of nature, deeming it not detached but rather dysfunctional, the parallelism sketches the idea of an urban environment as an ecosystem. The move is key because that is what enables a vision of the urban space as problematic from an environmental point of view. More importantly, perhaps, is that this angle is only made possible by an act of slowing down. Inasmuch as previously discarded objects are taken out of their environment and put into a stage, there is a sense of invitation. Rather than repelling, Tübke proposes that one moves closer. Overall, ‘Kin’ serves as an effective strategy in stressing the rift between natural and urban. What is special, however, is that in this case that critique is enabled by an act of care toward the ultimate symbol of contempt. That is not a small gesture.