text: Carsten Theumer

The medal Rare Earth (“Seltene Erde”), 2013

A bird’s eye view of a megacity. A huge mountain of smartphones rising up out of its centre. Electronic waste that grows exponentially more every year. But where do all these resources come from?

Rare Earth is a play on words that describes our unique planet within the universe on the one hand and, on the other, those rare elements that are essential for the electronic devices of our mechanised world.

The back shows a second view from above: a gigantic opencast mine, one of the many around the world in which the precious raw materials are excavated.
The scars of our world, getting larger and deeper every day.
The mountain of waste, getting bigger and higher every day.
I had long wanted to assemble a cityscape out of used circuit board components; for this theme, doing just that seemed the only logical step.