In the search for untouched nature, we often overlook what has been created by human hands: fallow land is the postscript to any cultivation and, at the same time, the beginning of wilderness. Broom, silver rain, or creeping bent grass, which the untrained eye perceives only as weeds, green it with stubborn growth. Their emergence, however, is inextricably linked to the settlement of humans; it was the separation of cultivated land from wilderness that gave rise to fallow land. Where our dead rest today, it frames the graves; where our waste piles up in mountains, fallow land overgrows the slopes; and even in the no-man's-land between national borders, it thrives carefree: Where humans can only pass with difficulty or in secret, it bears witness to the diversity of carefree life.
In twelve stages, David Bröderbauer roams the wasteland – from Vienna's Nordbahnviertel to the Zollverein coal mine in North Rhine-Westphalia, from Lake Neusiedl in Burgenland to a military training area and the desert landscape of Mars. His Atlas of Fallow Land is an invitation to explore this seemingly insignificant space, to appreciate its niche existence and to discover its resistant beauty.
Non-fiction
David Bröderbauer, born in Zwettl, Austria, in 1981, is a writer and biologist. He works at the Botanical Garden of the University of Vienna, where he focuses primarily on science communication.
