This site-specific sculpture, The Chain Reaction, is situated on the contours of an absent pillar at the St. Nikolai Memorial, one of many traces left by the successive catastrophes that have shaped this site. The work connects to Alfred Nobel's presence in Germany and to his laboratory in Geesthacht, near Hamburg, where the invention and distribution of dynamite took place from 1867. The same area later associated with energy production when, after the Second World War, hosted a nuclear power plant now decommissioned.

The Chain Reaction traces and resurrects the pillars by using the same ingredients that Nobel employed in his factory: Glycerin, the multiple-purpose elixir and Kieselguhr – the fossilized remains of microscopic algae found in the Elbe region. Within the pillar, a landscape carved from Kieselguhr reveals a compressed timeline, the successive architectures of industry that have occupied this site, from Nobel's dynamite factory to the nuclear plant and beyond. Symbolically, it brings forth the duality of materials that can both create and reshape our world. The piece asks how can we reconcile growing energy demands with the necessity of degrowth when “the planet is a new proletariat” as Eva von Redecker has it? Nobel came to be remembered not only as a “merchant of death” but also as the founder of the Nobel Peace Prize. What daily steps are we to make to redirect the energy extraction to the collective energies for life? 

Mark Morris, born 1992 in Teluk Intan, lives and works in Hamburg.


Presented with the support of the Hamburgische Kulturstiftung.

Archival Access & historical context provided by Ulrike Neidhöfer, Förderkreis Industriemuseum Geesthacht e.V 

Technical and Precision Wizard, Michael Dachselt

3 dimensional, Conceptual & Moral support by 
Arjun Panayal
Mor Afgin
Natalya Stupka
Peter Lampe 
Swaantje Benson 
Tewprai Bualoi