Matej Filipič
featured in As Above, So Below
Horizons of prosperity
Horizons of prosperity is a project exploring the human desire and necessity to interact with its environment and adapt it. Photographing the rural Netherlands since adapting and engineering land has always been an integral part of Dutch existence and culture. Photographing places where the character of its development shines through. Where people past and present left their marks, changing uninhabited land into the landscape we see today. Through millennia people have adapted how they interacted with their environment as also happened with Industrialisation of society, bringing with it a new kind of landscape. It enabled people globally to confine production into a part of land, changing it beyond recognition where nature merely provides space, and the landscape is a reflection of man. Filming such industrial landscapes provides context of a global constantly moving production where our needs are abstracted into a new landscape bringing prosperity to more people than ever before and providing a mirror to our interaction with the place we inhabit.
Previous work
from Trickle Publication
Silent presence
How does old fashioned energy production impact its immediate environment?
Our energy needs are massive and regardless of climate conventions and green energy plans coal is still being mined and burned all around the globe. The biggest open-pit lignite (brown coal) mine is located near Cologne, Germany, where an ancient forest, alongside many villages has been displaced, creating a growing wound in the earth, and influencing the landscape around it. I want to experience and capture the mine’s impact on its surroundings and the people connected with this area.
