Ruins in Reverse – Schnöggersburg 2013–2025

Ruins in Reverse – Schnöggersburg 2013–2025 documents and reflects on Michael Disqués’s twelve-year exploration of Schnöggersburg – a town on the Letzlinger Heide moors near Magdeburg. It was built by the German Bundeswehr for the purposes of carrying out military exercises. An artificial urban space, it acts as a simulation for future war missions, and is at the same time a politically and socially charged arena. What began as a long-term documentary project has evolved against the backdrop of global crises into a critical reflection on order, control and the relationship between reality and simulation. The publication compiles an extensive photographic archive on the construction development of the site, while its collages and a video project turn it into a wider cross-media space of reference. The arrangement and editing of the photographs develop an own visual language – as an artistic examination of a place in which power, a symbolic display of prestige and military planning come together.