Alien Unit 43

The Zurich Harbour Crane—in all its maritime industrial glory—stood proudly on Zurich’s alienated Limmatquai from April 2014 to January 2015 as part of an art project by the artist group ‘zürich transit maritim’.
The crane, dating back to 1963, originated from the East German harbour city of Rostock.

Martian Fighting Machine

The harbour crane evokes the Martian fighting machines from H.G. Wells’ science fiction novel The War of the Worlds, first published in 1898, in which our world is confronted with a Martian invasion.

This series documents the remains of one such Tripod—Alien Unit 43—discovered in Zurich after the Martians were defeated by a bacterial infection.

Rather than removing and scrapping the remains of the Martian attack on humankind, the fighting machine was preserved as a stark reminder that life on Earth was nearly annihilated by an alien aggressor.