The gift exercise / Invitation 8.1: Nitrogen – Schnee aus China, Brot aus Luft

For the exhibition at a local farm site, Willimann/Arai designed a series of six site-specific diazotype posters featuring a text accompanied by reproductions of historical illustrations and photographs. These trace the history of human interactions with the biological nitrogen cycle in the context of agriculture, and its impact on the environment.

As the diazotypes fade quickly in direct sunlight, they are regularly reproduced and replaced by farm's staff, using the chicken barn of the farm as a darkroom for development of the diazotypes. This manual process inevitably leads to imperfections in the prints, which – as opposed to the desired accuracy of machine-made copies – leads to the uniqueness of each copy.