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Opening: 30.03.2025 “Königsgrube”

Markus Jeschaunig

A former pumping station of a disused coal mine is now an installation; the name it retains has an auspicious ring to it: Königsgrube — the King’s Mine. The past and the present shape Markus Jeschaunig’s work in which he has transformed fragments of the dismantled building into a hybrid landscape.
From 1860 to 1967, coal mining at the Konigsgrube pit in Herne-Rohlinghausen
was extremely productive; but once the black gold had been fully removed the ground that remained
was depleted and riddled with holes. The subsidences amounts to up to ten metres. The pumping station’s purpose was to channel the wastewater from neighbouring municipalities into the
Huller Bach stream, and from there into the Emscher. The closure of the coal mine made underground wastewater disposal possible and the pumping station was shut down. Jeschaunig used the partially filled-in foundations to build an installation that sculpturally integrates various elements of the building: a part of one staircase has been preserved; three pipes tower up to create a solardriven fountain from which water drops and sounds emerge. Where the over twelve-metre-deep basin once stood that prevented rainwater from seeping away, a marsh forest has evolved, a biotope of six nursery-grown black alders that thrive in damp ground and bring to mind the pre-industrial wetlands that once bordered the Emscher. Rainwater is collected in a cistern on the
paved forecourt and, together with the photovoltaic pergola, enables completely self-sufficient operation. As an artistically reshaped ruin, Jeschaunig’s work alludes both to the outstanding technology and to the enormous ecological devastation brought on by coal mining, while at the
same time showing a way for new life and ≪climate-positive≫ places to emerge in
the city.

Address
Hofstraße 24, 44651 Herne
44651 Herne
Map

MATERIAL

Concrete structure, (fragment of the former pumping station), steel pipe duplicates, fence elements, iron grating, concrete stairs (rom original parts), water cistern, storage substrates, water pump, PV pergola, storage gravel, control switchboard, water gutters, quarry forest vegetation (sedge, fern, mint, black alder, etc.), sound installation, drip installation, synthetic resin casting

Dimensions quarry forest: 13.10 × 11.70 m
Dimensions of total area: 24.90 × 21.60 m
Depth of back-filled former suction room: 12.50 m

 

 

Markus Jeschaunig

Markus Jeschaunig, born 1982 in Graz, Austria, studied at the University of Art and Industrial Design Linz, the Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University Istanbul and the Vienna University of Technology. In 2012, he founded his own artistic practice under the title »Agency in Biosphere«. In 2012, he participated in the Change Course Conference organised by the Club of Rome in Winterthur. As a member of team.breathe.austria, he is co-author of »Breathe.Austria« – Austrian Pavilion at Expo 2015 in Milan.

Inspired by the forces and dynamics of the lithosphere, hydrosphere, atmosphere and biosphere, Markus Jeschaunig’s works unfold in the field of tension between art, ecology, landscape, urbanism, technology as well as public space and activism. The project »Oase No. 8«, which Markus Jeschaunig realised in the old town of Graz in 2015, dealt prototypically with the visible use of unused energy in the city. For the temporary installation, the artist channelled the waste heat from two on-site freezing plants into a plastic bubble and created a tropical climate for growing exotic plants. In 2018, Markus Jeschaunig installed »The Weather Project«, a fountain in the sculpture park at the Haus am Waldsee, which used water mist to create a weather phenomenon over the lake.

Markus Jeschaunig lives and works in Graz and Premstätten, Austria.