Planetarische Bauern

In Saline Operations, cologne-based artist and filmmaker Viktor Brim (born 1987 in Tashkent, Uzbekistan) turns his attention to the Mojave Desert in the southwestern United States. Once ancient salt lakes, now desiccated, their geological strata record the climate of millions of years. Today, these sites are used to harvest solar salt, an important storage medium in photovoltaics. The rugged terrain evokes an extraterrestrial landscape. Brim immerses it in data-driven colour using an NDVI filter, rendering concealed tectonic layers, vegetation zones and human-made infrastructure starkly visible in what Brim describes as an “operational view” of the landscape. Presented across several screens arranged in the exhibition space, which is structured like a map using geodesic grids, and accompanied by an AI-generated four-channel soundtrack, *Saline Operations foregrounds the complexity of a geography that’s in constant flux, shaped by both natural forces and extractive human activity.