Earth has always been an artistic material: ochre in painting, clay in sculpture, the land as a ground for drawing or building. A shift occurred in the late 1960s towards an interest in earth as matter and process in itself, as opposed to a medium deployed in the service of artistic representation. Most of the artists I have discussed use earth in an abstract or performative way, exploring its material properties while exploiting its potential as a signifier of birth and death, concealment and revelation, temporality and place. One of the most effective aspects of Haacke’s installation is its ability to apply the lessons of process and systems-based art of the late 1960s to convey a political message – something achieved surprisingly little in the art of that period, despite its attendant political turmoil. Constantly evolving and literally self-effacing, Der Bevölkerung resists the intransigent, moralising logic of the monument. Instead, it quietly demonstrates that whatever the conditions and however diverse the soil, grass will continue to grow.

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