As part of iMAL Projects Office 2025, Annika is selected for a FabLab experimentation Residency, where she will work on her project " Windmills for Christmas/ windmills of shame "

" The point of departure for the topic arose from the observation of two random objects – one is a toy, the other used as decoration. During Christmas my nephew built a little wooden windmill, which uses the energy of solar panels on its roof to mimic the movement of wind energy production. At the same time my mother set up a traditional German Christmas pyramid, which uses the heated air rising from candles to move the rotor blades at its top. This activates the different levels of the building, letting the cliched images of a Middle East, palm trees and camels, turn in endless circles. The Kitsch of one and the redundant energy production of the other resonated with me as they are links to my work “please don’t water me, I’m artificial 1/ 2”, which copies nature in plastic and evokes a visual fake-sustainability. I started collecting objects following a research of aesthetic similarity and a visual neighbourhood in their performance of rotating mechanic movements. The work with ready-made objects also means to uncover existing desires or tastes within society. Obviously there is an endlessly growing need to be supported by technology and little machines in our modern daily life: by motorized fly repellents, that chaise flies, Lazy Susans, that distribute food on our tables, through handheld fans, electric toys, automated Hoovers, or hypnotizing decorative objects as the Christmas pyramid or jewellery displays. At the same time we are just as obviously moving towards an ecological crisis, and still far right wing party AfD has success with its election promise to destroy all windmills when they are in power – also because they are simply ugly “windmills of shame”, as Alice Weidel states. Simultaneously, big enterprises tend to particularly highlight their use of renewable energies, a green-washed self-presentation of which a representative, or pictographic one is SmartFlower. The image of renewable energies is trapped between dreamworlds of progress and visions of ‘green growth’ on the one hand and a future of regression, the result of fear and conspiracy theories, on the other."

Annika Boll is a german-born digital artist, working in game design, 3D software, animation and installation. Her work utilizes digitization technologies on nature to convert its analogue-organic information into digital forms and reversely, a process she playfully describes as digital gardening. She has developed methods of archiving real-life materials through meticulous 3D scanning, followed by their reanimation as ghostly representations within unreal nature scenes or their reactivation within real space in the form of automated 3D prints. Her work aims to explore the connections between the circulation of spectator-ship and the concept of walking as a method, specifically how 3D technologies aid in the creation of new perspectives in navigating within the nuances of reality and simulation. With humor she wants to disrupt the soothing effect of digital preservation and storage by recognizing and highlighting its artificiality.

After having studied Cultural Anthropology and Social Psychology in Germany and India, she studied Multidimensional Strategies at Kunsthochschule Kassel, later moved to France and graduated in Fine Arts at the Villa Arson Nice. Recently she has been artist-in-residency at Atelier Panormos, Palermo, at -1, Het Nieuwe Instituut, Rotterdam, at V2 – Lab for the Unstable Media, Rotterdam, and participated in the Art4Sea residency on Ustica Island, Italy. In 2025 she will take part in the 16th Triennale für Kleinplastik, Fellbach, and work on her artistic research at a.pass, Brussels. She lives and works in Brussels, Belgium.

Discover more : https://www.are.na/annika-boll/channels

Credit for Annika Boll's portray : Xavier Marquis
Credit for "Windmills for Christmas/ windmills of shame" visuals : Annika Boll