A biologist who vanished months ago during field research reappears in an empty lot in the middle of the city. She silently observes the weeds pushing through the cracks.

The city continues as if nothing happened. Traffic passes. Construction cranes move in the distance. But here, between broken concrete and rusting fences, another world persists.

The Empty Lot is a site-specific installation exploring the strange ecology of forgotten urban spaces: vacant lots, infrastructural leftovers, contaminated grounds and plots of land abandoned by economic forces.

They may appear empty to passers-by. Yet on closer inspection they reveal themselves to be dense with life, adaptation and silent transformation. Non-human species slowly reclaim the terrain, turning the scars of industry into reservoirs of unexpected biodiversity and laboratories of evolution.

Places that hint at what once was – and what, perhaps, could be again.

“There were thousands of ‘dead’ spaces like the empty lot I had observed, thousands of transitional environments that no one saw, that had been rendered invisible because they were not “of use.” Anything could inhabit them for a time without anyone noticing.” – Annihilation, Jeff VanderMeer

Developed during a three-month residency at ZK/U (Berlin) from February to April 2026, the project is created in collaboration with biologists from the Leibniz Institute of Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries (IGB), whose research investigates evolutionary ecology and adaptation under extreme urban conditions.

The Empty Lot is the second part of a trilogy inspired by Jeff VanderMeer’s cult novel Annihilation — a universe where science fiction, horror and ecology converge. While Symbiosis begins as an investigation and character study and Annihilation brings the novel to the stage, The Empty Lot reveals the hidden ecology of urban wastelands.