Design Map · Eindhoven
A Matter of Salt
Graduation project by Josephine Conen at Design Academy Eindhoven, 2026. Shown during Dutch Design Week in Eindhoven on Design Map, location F5.
‘A Matter of Salt’ is a video installation that examines the ecological transformation along the River Werra in Germany, reshaped by more than a century of potassium salt extraction. Central to the work is the concept of shifting baseline syndrome, the tendency of each generation to mistake the environment it inherits for one that has always existed. Blending documentary footage with personal testimonies, the installation traces salinisation through lived sensory experience, understanding acts of witnessing as environmental evidence. As it moves through the landscape, discarded salt accumulates a chemical record of the environments it passes through and the reactions it causes. The installation brings this otherwise invisible record of pollution to the surface, on a salt-coated, billboard-like structure carrying the projected video. The structure’s form references signs found throughout the region’s extraction zone, redirecting their narratives of industrial prosperity towards stories that resist the normalisation of ecological harm.