Tanja Engelberts
Decom
4K video, color, loop, 14'56'', 2021
From April 29 to June 14, 2026, the Fonds cantonal d’art contemporain is pleased to host the Biennial of Urban Art and Nature (re)connecting.earth on the screens of the Mire program at the Chêne-Bourg and Eaux-Vives train stations!
Decom is a portrait of an industrial site situated at the end of the life cycle of oil and gas infrastructure. It is here that offshore platforms, once symbols of energy power and intensive exploitation, are brought to be dismantled. Removed from the sea, these monumental structures are gradually cut up, sorted, recycled and sometimes reused on land. The film depicts this transitional space, where the remnants of a dominant industry are reduced to mere materials. Significantly, the work is devoid of any visible human presence. Machines occupy the entire frame, carrying out the dismantling operations. This absence reinforces the impression of an automated world, where humans appear only as the distant initiators of processes that are beyond their control. The site thus becomes a post-industrial landscape, almost autonomous, in which the traces of human activity remain without bodies to embody them. The film is also notable for its distinctive rhythm. It alternates between slow, almost meditative sequences and moments of sudden violence, when structures are cut down or moved. This contrast reflects the life cycle of the oil fields themselves: a long and gradual exploitation, followed by a brutal and irreversible end. Through an alternation of contemplative wide shots and immersive close-ups, Tanja Engelberts places the viewer at the heart of this process, often at eye level with the machinery. This work invites reflection on the material consequences of the energy industry. It reveals the other side of the extraction process, showing not the production, but the disappearance of the infrastructure and the transformations it leaves in its wake.
Video presented as part of the 3rd edition of the (re)connecting.earth Biennale, organised by the art-werk association.
