uog …uog … uog…
Something croaks among the ferns in the dark. Moorburg is under threat. For decades, this small village in the north of Harburg has feared being swallowed by the expanding port. Squeezed between a refinery and a motorway, crisscrossed by massive power lines, this remaining patch of moorland continues to resist the construction of a motorway extension planned to cut directly through the landscape. Following protests by local residents and environmental activists, the project was temporarily halted, but planning continues, and the future of the moor remains uncertain.

For the fourth edition of Night Shifts, artists Rosanna Graf and Jonathan Penca turn their attention to this unique yet endangered landscape, which provides a habitat for strictly protected moor frogs and toads. In their performance Nature Found Them Guilty, inspired by new forms of ecological thought such as Dark Ecology (see Morton; Kingsnorth), they draw on the horror genre, which has long explored the limits of human perception in relation to more-than-human worlds.

During an evening walk through the moor, a video in the style of a B-horror movie will be created together with the audience. Inspired by the revenge-of-nature films of the 1970s, in which nature remembers, resists, and strikes back, the work adopts the genre’s exaggerated visual language and dramatic storytelling. Audience members are invited to become active participants in the film and take on roles from the script throughout the night walk.

As the sun sets over the moorland, two reporters attempt to uncover the mystery behind the disappearance of several road construction workers. Their investigation leads them past bubbling waters and enigmatic scrap heaps to the site of the planned motorway extension, where peat-cutting labourers, shady bureaucrats, and rebellious bikers cross paths. Dark clouds gather overhead while, behind the amphibian fence, something begins to stir—something that is no longer content to merely watch.

Schedule
The three Nachtwächterinnen (Lisa Klosterkötter, Gesa Troch, and Philipp Joy Reinhardt) welcome you on 27 June 2026 at 8:15 PM at Dammtor station. From there, a shuttle bus will take participants to the event location in Moorburg. Following the approximately two-hour walk and video shoot with Rosanna Graf and Jonathan Penca, everyone is invited to gather for drinks and snacks. The shuttle bus will return participants to Dammtor station at approximately 12:30 AM.

Registration
Registration is required for this event. Capacity is limited.
Please register by 18 June 2026 via email at: info@night-shifts.com

Important Notice
The performance is also a film shoot. Visitors become performers, extras, and members of the film crew. By participating, attendees agree in advance to being filmed and to the subsequent use of the recorded material. During the evening, some audience members may be invited to take part in scenes with speaking roles. The script is written in German. Participation in these scenes is entirely voluntary; however, active engagement and a willingness to embrace the situation are strongly encouraged.

Accessibility & Code of Conduct
Information can be found here.

On Night Shifts 4

The chorus of frogs roars over the assembly. We see the MARGRAVE’s lips moving; he is gesturing, he is beside himself, but we cannot hear him. The TOWN GUARDS look around anxiously. The crowd surges. The group scatters in panic. The camera rushes after them, loses them, falls. Comes to a standstill. CUT.
(From Nature Found Them Guilty, Rosanna Graf and Jonathan Penca, 2026)

Since their youth, Rosanna Graf and Jonathan Penca have shared a fascination for B-movies, costumes and DIY craft, camp and extravaganza, history and subculture, as well as for uncovering the unseen and casting the popular in a new light. They are interested in speculation, legends, new and old myths, as well as investigations into the fascinating natural world and its troubling present. Nature Found Them Guilty is the third collaboration between the two artists, who met in the 2000s in a youth theater group in Munich.

Since then, Rosanna Graf has developed a multifaceted artistic practice encompassing video, performance, and installation. Her works often center around experimental, research-based texts in which feminist, non-human, and grotesque characters take center stage as figures of projection. The societal fears and desires inscribed within these characters create a tension between humor and unease. This gives rise to surreal intermediate worlds, detached from the space-time continuum, in which these marginal figures fight against their own stereotyping.

Jonathan Penca works with drawing, sculpture, performance, and video. His interest in stage and costume design and dramaturgy is reflected in his artistic practice through the negotiation of the boundaries between reality and staging. The tension between natural sciences, pop culture, and science fiction offers starting points for reflections on the relationship between queer and fluid embodiment as a subversive element and late-capitalist individualization, which Penca negotiates in his artistic work.

For Night Shifts 4, Rosanna Graf and Jonathan Penca have developed the participatory performance Nature Found Them Guilty. Based on the history of Moorburg—a Hamburg district threatened with demolition due to port projects—this site-specific work focuses on nature conservation and addresses the acute threat to the surrounding moors posed by the planned highway construction.

As part of a nocturnal moor hike, a video is created together with the audience in the tradition of B-horror movies. Participants slip into roles within a narrative about nature defending itself against human intervention. As darkness falls, the situation intensifies.

The fourth part of Night Shifts approaches the theme of darkness against the backdrop of a sinister scenario that incorporates both the site-specific reality in Moorburg and the concept of Dark Ecology (see: Morton; Kingsnorth). The latter refers to an approach within ecology and environmental philosophy that deals with the contradictory and often unsettling sides of the human relationship with the environment, opposing the romanticism and romanticized self-perception deeply inscribed in human history regarding the human-nature relationship.