Joe Is Dead, 2016. A treadmill, a fan, and a tumbleweed are brought together in an absurd closed circuit. The treadmill runs endlessly, the fan blows, and the tumbleweed, usually a symbol of freedom, chance, and wandering across barren landscapes, spins in place, trapped in perpetual motion. The work stems from a collaboration between three Berlin-based artists who share an interest in exposing the paradoxes of human interaction with nature. Julius von Bismarck manipulates perception through machines and media; Julian Charrière explores ecological and geological extremes; Felix Kiessling investigates spatial phenomena and the limits of seeing. Together, often as part of the collective Das Numen, they create staged “experiments” where natural forces are displaced and domesticated inside artificial systems. Joe The Dead crystallizes this approach. The tumbleweed, a plant that survives through dispersal, is removed from its ecological context and subjected to technological captivity. The treadmill, normally a device of self-optimization, becomes a stage for futility. The title lends the work a tragicomic tone: the tumbleweed is animated yet lifeless, a character condemned to repeat its performance. At once humorous and unsettling, the piece critiques the way modernity simulates and controls the natural world. What appears as progress collapses into circular exhaustion; what symbolizes freedom becomes spectacle. Immediate in its absurdity yet layered in meaning, Joe The Dead reveals the contradictions at the heart of contemporary life, where even nature is drawn into loops of endless repetition.