Minett: The Garden of Earthly Metabolisms

With Kristina Shatokhina, architect, writer and a PhD candidate at University of Luxembourg

VENUE: Casino Display, 1, rue de la Loge, L-1945 Luxembourg

In English

How do landscapes and human bodies transform each other?

In the southern part of Luxembourg, in the post-industrial « Minett » region, lands and people alike bear the scars left by decades of iron-ore mining. In the endless pursuit of extraction and economic growth, illnesses, myths, wonders, and violences have marked the regional urban fabric and the bodies of its inhabitants.

Architectural researcher Kristina Shatokhina presents Minett: The Garden of Earthly Metabolisms, a project developed with Christine Chen and Cornelis van der Male during the “Worlding Soils” design studio at University of Luxembourg (Fall 2023). Tracing local stories from the “Minettsdapp” (as the inhabitants of the industrial south of the country are popularly known), to the myth and cult of Saint Barbara (the saint patron of the miners), and  black lung disease, to name but a few, the project investigates human bodies as archives of industrial extraction, positioning the process of dynamic exchange between the soil and the bodies as central to understand the entangled realities of extractivist politics.

At a time when Luxembourg is transitioning from a steel-based economy to new narratives of “sustainability” and space mining, this research prompts a reflection on the way dismantling the myths of the industrial era could pave the way for new futures. What myths will guide us next? And how can architects take responsibility for shaping them?

Image © Kristina Shatokhina, Christine Chen, Cornelis Van Der Male