Atmospheric Archives
Clemens Winkler on the Fleeting Legacies of the Ruhr Region
STS Conference »Before Ruins« 2026, Case »Toxic Heritage Ruhr«, photo: Clemens Winkler. Copyright: Matters of Activity
At the STS conference »Before Ruins« at Ruhr University Bochum, Clemens Winkler participated in the case study »Toxic Heritage Ruhr« case study. During the Case Day, participants were taken from the German Mining Museum in Bochum to the Zollverein Coal Mine Industrial Complex and PACT Zollverein, where they focused on industrial sites whose ecological and material legacies persist to this day. Clemens contributed his research on atmospheric infrastructures, air samples, and microclimates to the case study's field-research format. Using simple sensors, agar plates, adhesive sampling films, and notational forms, he examined air as an archive of dust, moisture, microbes, and industrial residues. In this way, »toxic heritage« became legible not only as a matter of soils, buildings, or landforms, but also as a fleeting, shared atmosphere. This work combines design research, STS, aerobiology, and speculative methods, and views atmospheric measurement as a practice of paying attention to »invisible« ecological and political interconnections.
