Union is an ongoing project about the personal use of lignite (brown coal) and its relationship with land appropriation, interference with nature, and the coal phase-out by 2038. The former as well as active mining of lignite in Brandenburg heavily shapes a significant part of the landscape. The imprint 'Union' on my commercially purchased coal briquette, in turn, reveals that this briquette originally comes from the Rhenish lignite mining area in western Germany.

In the spring of 2022, carrying a coal briquette in my luggage, I embarked on a journey to the Welzow lignite open-pit mine in northeastern Germany. The industrially pressed briquette brought along was placed at an appropriate spot within a freshly excavated layer of the Lausitz lignite seam and now rests there amidst the raw lignite mass. Through erosion and weathering, the briquette will lose its shape and merge back into the larger mass.

The intervention addresses aspects of extractivism and the relationship between mass and individual piece. In this process, the imprint on the briquette—'Union'—is literally interpreted through the material reunification.