Alien Unit 43

The Zurich Harbour Crane—in all its maritime industrial glory—stood strong 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 from 1963 originated from the East German harbour city Rostock.

Martian Fighting Machine

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

This series documents the remains of one of these Tripods—Alien Unit 43—discovered in Zurich after the defeat of the Martians through bacterial infection.

Instead of removing and scrapping the remains of the Martian attack against mankind, the fighting machine was preserved as a reminder that life on Earth was almost annihilated by an alien aggressor.