{"id":54,"date":"2025-05-23T17:19:46","date_gmt":"2025-05-23T17:19:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/rikkeluther.dk\/?page_id=54"},"modified":"2026-05-22T11:45:51","modified_gmt":"2026-05-22T11:45:51","slug":"rikke-luther","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/rikkeluther.dk\/","title":{"rendered":"What are you doing?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Two new books:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Publishers: Archive Books<\/em>, Berlin and Art Hub Copenhagen,<\/em> see: archivebooks.org\/mud-and-the-earth-system\/<\/a> &
archivebooks.org\/we-lost-control-again-political-and-cultural-architectures-in-the-time-of-heat-and-extinction\/<\/a>
In Copenhagen you can find the books at Academic Books, Charlottenborg, Politikens Boghandel, BR\u00d8G and Det Kgl. Biblioteks library.

The books and screening of Here’s… Mud In Your Eye<\/em> will be presentet at the Five Leaf: Institute for Law & Aesthetics <\/em>conference, Queen Mary, London University the 1st & 2nd of June<\/a> and in Tokyo Cine Center the 23rd of June, organised by Art Initiative Tokyo (AIT).<\/a> [Future Screenings<\/strong>: Here\u2019s\u2026 Mud In Your Eye<\/em> will be making its Japanese debut.\u00a0As the film is available with Japanese subtitles, please do not hesitate to contact AIT if you are interested in organising future screenings or using the film for educational purposes.]<\/strong>

The volumes brings together a selection of my own recent art works, mappings, and film scripts the last ten years, followed with new texts by leading scientists ain Earth System Science, Genegeology and Political Aesthetics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mud … and the Earth System <\/em>explores groundbreaking research in Earth system sciences, and highlights the challenges of communicating these findings to the public. As once-stable \u2018mudscapes\u2019 transform, they become both symptoms and symbols of a rapidly warming planet. This book delves into humanity\u2019s connection to these changes through the study of ancient organic and inorganic compounds that have come alive after millennia. It poses essential questions about what these evolving \u2018mud\u2019 compounds reveal about Earth\u2019s deep past and our imminent future.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Born from collaborative research led by artist Rikke Luther at the Interdisciplinary Research of Ocean, Climate and Society (ROCS) at the University of Copenhagen in collaboration with Earth Scientist Professor Katherine Richardson, this publication showcases how artistic practices \u2013 such as image-making, conceptual mapping and filmmaking \u2013 enhance scientific representation.
Mud … and the Earth System features commissioned essays from experts in Earth Science, Political Aesthetics, and Molecular Geobiology. The book pairs their insights with compelling artwork, including largescale maps of emerging \u2018mudscapes\u2019 in Svalbard, Iceland, Greenland, and Gotland.
The essays give perspectives on the DNA that is collected and stored in mud, which connects life across timescales as an evolutionary resource framing the interactions of human societies with the extreme complexities of the Earth system. Esther Lesley\u2019s \u2018Mud Crystal and Polar Thinking\u2019 sets the scene, followed by Karina K. Sand\u2019s \u2018Death and Life in Mud: Two Million Years in a Split Second\u2019, and Earth scientist Katherine Richardson has contributed with \u2018A Muddy Diary\u2019.
As Richardson sums up \u2018mud is an important medium for storing the archives that describe the history of both life and climate on Earth, and we are only just beginning to understand the fantastic stories that mud can tell.\u2019
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We Lost Control Again<\/em> – Political and Cultural<\/em> Architectures in the Time<\/em> of Heat and Extinction<\/em> <\/strong><\/mark>
We Lost Control Again recounts the 20th century attempt to construct an international political and aesthetic order in the wake of war, and what remains of that Babelian architecture today. The 20th century bequeathed a cross-national political and legal architecture, cemented in place by the United Nations. Ideological differences were overlaid with an assumption of progress and a universalising aesthetic of \u2018concrete Modernity\u2019. However, as communism collapsed, and a digital communication and control systems took root, neo-liberal hostility to the Enlightenment values underpinning Western democracy and the rulesbased international order swelled. As the aesthetic and political architectures of Modernity have retreated, the means through which planetary heating and species extinctions might be addressed have faded rapidly. We Lost Control Again surveys the questions raised by the work of artist Rikke Luther between 2015 and 2025. Luther explores the long-range effects of this era of collapse, and the effect on social orders and the stability of the Earth system.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Esther Leslie\u2019s \u2018The Particulars of Concrete\u2019 sets the scene, followed by an extended essay by Jaime Stapleton. \u2018The Global Commons in Context\u2019 examines the origins of this key concept, from its emergence during the Cold War, to its role in today\u2019s fracturing economic and political systems. Rapid heating has exposed the practical weaknesses of the concept, but Stapleton argues the very notion of \u2018The Global Commons\u2019 itself constitutes a spectacularly dangerous method for framing the interactions of human societies with the complexities of the Earth system. This point is further underscored by Rikke Luther. \u2018Concrete Aesthetics \u2014 From Universal Rights to Financial Post-Democracy\u2019 explores the shifting cultural and ideological understandings of \u2018concrete Modernity\u2019 through artworks, film scripts and critical essays. 20th century concrete spoke to social and economic progress in all its varying ideological forms. Later, however, that aesthetic was co-opted, and currently expresses the inequities of a post-democratic world where the social protections of Modernity are openly reviled. As control slips from voters into the hands of shareholders, Luther asks whether markets are able to truly order themselves let alone guarantee a stable Earth system.
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In January I finished the short essay-non-fiction film Here’s… Mud In Your Eye<\/em> . It will be screened at Queen Mary, London (1+2nd of June) Tokyo Cine Center (23rd of June), and in the end of the year in Valletta, Malta<\/a>. See the trailer below, and, click to the new interview in Japanese on-line magazine Bijutsutechno<\/a>.
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About the work (2023 – 2025)<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Glaciers, sea ice and permafrost are melting. Land is subsiding and slipping away. Lakes recede, lakebeds collapse and swelling mud flows towards the oceans at an ever-increasing pace.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For millennia, the Earth system has behaved in a way that was largely stable. Until now. Human-induced global heating has set everything into motion, and the most dramatic changes to the landscape are currently unfolding in the Arctic and Antarctic, where the pace is so rapid that scientists are struggling to keep up with the mapping of new biochemical topographies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For several years, artist Rikke Luther has worked with climate change in her practice-based research\u2014most recently with a specific focus on mud and sediments, and how we, as humans, attempt to comprehend the accelerating transformations that our Earth system is undergoing. As part of her postdoctoral project Ocean-Lands: Mud in the Earth System<\/em>, for which Kunsthal Aarhus is a partner host institution, Luther now presents her research in the new exhibition Here’s… Mud In Your Eye<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u2018IT TAKES A WIZARD\u2019
The latested solo exhibition Here’s… Mud In Your Eye<\/em> \u2013 Mud in the Earth System features photographic and textile works, but takes its point of departure in the films Dust & Flow: Muds, Movement, Time, Scale<\/em>, and Here’s… Mud In Your Eye<\/em> which brings together recent scientific research on mud, environmental DNA and the concept of \u2018deep time\u2019. The films contains footage from Luther\u2019s research expeditions to Greenland, Gotland, Svalbard, Iceland and The North Atlantic. Through a combination of personal and scientific reflections and a poetic, richly imaginative aesthetic, viewers are given insight into the vast changes unfolding in the Arctic\u2014and perhaps even a new ethical and aesthetic language for the unfathomable environmental shifts we are facing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The films are a thought-provoking exploration of our rapidly shifting world\u2014one in which not only science speaks, but also the figure of the \u2018wizard\u2019; for that is what it takes to grasp and contain the complex interplay of mudscapes, movement, scale and time.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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FROM THE LOCAL TO THE UNIVERSAL\u2014AND BACK AGAIN
While Art hub Copenhagen has served as artistic host institution for Rikke Luther\u2019s practice-based postdoctoral research, the project has been scientifically anchored\u2014not within a faculty of the humanities, as is often the case for artistic research\u2014but at the natural sciences institute ROCS at the Universities of Copenhagen and Iceland, led by Professor Katherine Richardson, former member of the Danish Council on Climate Change (2019\u20132025) and head of the Planetary Boundaries research project. Luther has also collaborated closely with biochemist Karina Krarup Sand from the Globe Institute, whose research explores the intersections of genetics, geology and archaeology.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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It is from their groundbreaking research that Here’s… Mud In Your Eye<\/em><\/em> and Dust & Flow <\/em>takes much of their inspiration. Additionally, the films draw on empirical material gathered by Luther on her research journeys, and on a particular conceptual approach to the idea of \u2018greater scale\u2019, inspired by anthropologist Anna Tsing. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Rikke Luther, \u201dHere\u2019s\u2026 Mud In Your Eye\u201d, Kunsthal Aarhus, 2026. Foto: Jacob Friis-Holm Nielsen.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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About <\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Rikke Luther is an artist and researcher. The current work examines the movements in the Earth System stemming from the man-made environmental and biodiversity crises. 

The Ocean-Lands: Mud Within the Earth System<\/em> builds on previous works exploring the interrelations between landscape, language, politics, financialisation, law, geology, biology, economics, natural history and the Earth System. Research outputs take the form of film and large-scale drawn mappings, distributed in exhibitions, screenings, publications, and pod casts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Luther\u2019s work has been presented in Biennales and Triennales [such as Venice, Singapore, Echigo-Tsumari, Auckland, G\u00f6teborg and Sao Paulo]; museums [Arnhem, Moderna Museum, Kunsthaus Bregenz, The New Museum, Museo Tamayo, Smart Museum]; exhibitions [like Beyond Green: Towards a Sustainable Art, 48C Public.Art.Ecology, \u00dcber Lebenskunst and Weather Report: Art & Climate Change]: as well as film festivals [such as CPH:DOX* \u2013 Copenhagen International Documentary Film Festival and the Perth International Film Festival].

Contact: <\/strong>Rikke.Luther@Proton.me<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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More<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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The books has just been published, where can I find them?<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

In book shops and libraries around the world where Archive Books (Berlin) is presented. The price is 18\u20ac & 30\u20ac. The books can be ordered on-line and found at Academic Books in Denmark.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


What is the Post doc about, when & where was it done?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Ocean-Lands: Mud Within the Earth System<\/em> (2023 – 2025) was done under Prof Katherine Richardson at \u2018Queen Margrethe\u2019s and Vigd\u00eds Finnbogad\u00f3ttir\u00b4s Interdisciplinary Research Centre on Ocean, Climate, and Society\u2019 (ROCS), Center for Marcoecology, Evolution and Climate (CMEC),  The Globe Institute, University of Copenhagen, Denmark. Support for the first two years was supported by the Novo Nordisk Foundation; ROCS and the Carlsberg Foundation subsequently contributed. <\/p>\n\n\n\n


The brief project description<\/strong> goes like this:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Ocean-Lands: Mud Within the Earth System<\/em> is an art practice-based research project, examining \u2018mud-scapes\u2019 and the social, political, and bio-chemical, effects of their motion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For millennia, \u2018static muds\u2019 facilitated cultural exchanges across legal boundaries. Those once secure muds are now in motion. Glaciers and inland ice melt, as mudflats and swamps reclaim space from human occupation. Permafrost melts and sinks, as elsewhere land slips, lakes recede and their beds collapse. Swelling muds slide toward the oceans, facilitating the increasingly garbled circulations of the Earth System.

The Ocean-Lands<\/em> reflects on, and augments, work developing across other disciplines that are beginning to mark out a Venn diagram of intersecting concerns. At present, no single discipline spans the central intersection. The Ocean-Lands<\/em> looks toward that future discipline, with the objective of contributing a new ethical-aesthetic public language capable of communicating the shifts occurring within the Earth System.

The project explores two, inter-related, questions: \u2018The Social-Organisational Effects of the Ocean-Land Muds in Motion\u2019 and \u2018The Bio-Communicative Effects of the Ocean-Land Muds in Transition\u2019. Each devolves into a series of interrelated sub-questions, or tributaries, reflecting the transitional, circulatory, and uncertain, nature of the developing mud crisis.

These questions, will be explored, and expanded on, in a continuous, iterative, process between academic and creative works, drawing on fieldwork in Iceland, Greenland, Svalbard, Gotland and Denmark. Artistic outputs will take the form of four large-scale visual-cognitive maps, seven exhibitions, a book, and narrative-orientated documentary film, with immediate target groups in art and academia and, more widely at the different medias of the public sphere.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

(Copenhagen, December 2021)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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What is the Concrete Aesthetics: From Universal Rights to Financial Post-Democracy<\/em>?<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

In April 2021 the Ph.D. Concrete Aesthetics: From Universal Rights to Financial Post-Democracy<\/em> was defended with Esther Leslie (Political Aesthetics, Birkbeck, London University); Kim West (writer and curator) and Solveig Gade (IKK, Copehagen University) as opponents. In the assement the commity writes: \u2019The dissertation format is breaking new ground in its conception of how artistic practice, artistic research, and academic research may be merged, and as such the thesis is significant for both artists and scholars\u00b4and continuies ‘Concrete Aesthetics<\/em> is an original, independent, and important contribution to the emerging field of artistic research. Indeed, the dissertation provides evidence that \u201dartistic research\u201d may open a \u201ccross-disciplinary\u201d space of investigation that permits the mapping of relations that remain outside the bounds of the separate disciplines of \u201ctraditional\u201d academic research. \u2026 The dissertation format is breaking new ground in its conception of how artistic practice, artistic research, and academic research may be merged, and as such the thesis is significant for both artists and scholars\u2019.

The Ph.D. is a practice-based Artistic Research Ph.D. at the Department of Arts and Cultural Studies, University of Copenhagen; The Institute of Art, Text and Research, The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts; and the MIT Program in Art, Culture and Technology (ACT), School of Architecture and Planning, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, MA, US . 

Abstract<\/strong>
Concrete is the most widely used building material in the world. Its production is negatively linked to climate change, and its aesthetic to financial speculation and the inequality of what Colin Crouch has termed the \u2018post-democratic\u2019 era.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Once the concrete aesthetic spoke the language of progress, universal rights and a better society. Today, that disrupted political aesthetic demands cultural analysis, just as much as the carbon footprint and techno-fossils of concrete demand scientific attention. What does the aesthetic of concrete mean in a globalised world that regularly teeters at the edge of financial crisis and invites a certain environmental one?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The goal of this project is to analyse the historical movement from the Modern era of universal rights and democracy, toward a new era dominated by the global circulation of finance, and the effect that has on aesthetic language and meaning. This will be explored by examining the contrast between the history of concrete within art and cultural practice in the immediate post World War Two era in Europe and the aesthetic and ideological meaning of concrete in today\u2019s globalised economy. That race for economic resources will partly be mapped in the zones of the \u2018Global Commons\u2019 – zones outside the borders of national states, such as the \u2018High Sea and Deep Sea Bed\u2019. Those areas are deeply affected by the \u2018resource wars\u2019, especially over the sand used for concrete production. What does such extraction mean for economics, political life and, crucially, the environment?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The project is theoretical and practical. The theoretical aspect of the research will focus on the social and ideological beliefs that dominated each era to build a picture of how the cultural meaning of concrete has changed. The histories that differentiate one place, or site of action, from another are crucial. The democratic context that once gave Modernist concrete it\u2019s meaning in Scandinavia contrasts sharply with the post-democratic environment of today\u2019s Special Economic Zones. The practical part of this research will employ research-orientated creative practice to explore the potential of art and architectural interventions to generate new, materially embodied, understandings of these developments.

(Copenhagen, December 2015)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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Can you show some images?
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Sure… this is one out of four large maps in the World Mud Maps <\/em>serie, printed on textile. Each meassures nearly 4.5 m long and 2.5 m high. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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And here is the trailer for the sister film Dust and Flow<\/em> to the Here’s … Mud In Your Eye<\/em>. You can watch the film at CPH:DOX’s on-line platform<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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