Su Yu Hsin uses the blast furnace control room as the anchor point for her multidimensional video work. In Blast Furnace No. 2, the artist combines spectacular satellite images with archive material and interview excerpts to explore the themes of steel production, globalisation and the cosmic origins of iron from a kaleidoscopic perspective, drawing on geological, socio-historical and ecological perspectives.

In 1989, shortly before the closure of the Henrichshütte, blast furnace 2 was purchased by a Chinese steelworks, dismantled and rebuilt in Hunan. It operated there for another 15 years before being replaced by a larger furnace. Today in Hattingen, only an empty base, the “Ofensau”,  remains as a testament to the former heart of Henrichshütte. Blast Furnace No. 2 traces the paths of globalisation from Hattingen to Hunan – and finally into space. Looking at the mineral collection of the Henrichshütte, the film extends the  timeline of “HO II” to include geological time. There, an iron-bearing meteorite points to the metal’s cosmic origins: iron can be found everywhere in the universe and was already present in cosmic dust during the Earth’s formation. Su Yu Hsin takes up this deep-time narrative to shed light on the extraction and processing of raw materials.

Su Yu Hsin (born 1989, Taichung) is an artist and filmmaker. She explores ecology and its close relationship to technology. In her essayistic films and video installations, she reflects on technology, ecology, and the critical infrastructures that connect human and non-human worlds.
Her work has been exhibited at the Museum of Contemporary Art Busan, Taipei Biennale, ZKM Karlsruhe, Kyoto Art Centre, and the Haus der Kulturen der Welt Berlin, among others. She was a finalist for the 8th Huayu Youth Award (2020) and the LOOP Barcelona Discover (2018).