CARBON SPA
By Linda Paganelli
Carbon Spa invites visitors into an enclosed, cage-like wetland installation where relaxation and data harvesting collide. Amid artificial peat, soothing plant-generated music, and spa ambiance, the work stages a critical encounter: what does it mean to "relax" in a space where ecological restoration masks colonial extraction? Where personal wellness depends on commodified nature?
Inspired by a social-ecological analysis of carbon offsetting and greenwashing, Carbon Spa maps the hidden violences embedded in climate "solutions"—from Nazi-era drainage archives to contemporary land dispossession. Visitors experience the installation across a spectrum: from passive relaxation on the sofa to actively engaging with CO₂ monitoring devices and plant conductivity systems. Each choice becomes an act of complicity and, potentially, critical renegotiation.
The installation functions as both artwork and gathering space, inviting collective dialogue on the limits of offsetting, the seduction of green futures, and what it might mean to heal without erasing.
Research Foundation
Carbon Spa emerges from an ongoing interdisciplinary case study which examins the social-ecological systems of a peatland rewetting initiative in northern Brandenburg. Led by scientist Felice Diekel (University of Twente) and supported by Rosalie Arendt, Josef Kaiser, and Markus Berger, this research teams expertise covers the fields of life cycle assessment, geography, and interdisciplinary sustainability research.
The artwork engages in critical dialogue with the scientific research, particularly Diekel's work "Offsetting Beyond Single Outcomes: A Social–Ecological Action Situation Analysis of the Rehwiese Carbon Project." Through a reflexive, transdisciplinary approach, Carbon Spa questions the dominant logics embedded in carbon offsetting science, creating a space to interrogate the reproduction of human/nature dualisms and reflect on what gets erased when complexity is reduced to measurable outcomes.
Funded by the Alfred Toepfer Foundation's Small Change for Transformative Change program.
