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How can a 16th-century metallurgical handbook be reimagined as a score for the present day? “Schmelzer:innen” explores – through a blend of live-action role-play, craftsmanship and industrialisation, (de)colonial interconnections and digital appropriation – how local identity might be preserved and transformed.

In the square in front of the Mining Museum stands the silvery sculpture: three figures merging into one another, cast in aluminium slightly larger than life-size from a 3D print. A historical smelter, a female smelter and a third, synthetic figure, calculated in 2022 by a low-performance AI model based on historical woodcuts – a figure without a prototype or model. Their robes feature relief appliqués based on Georgius Agricola’s *De re metallica*, the tutorial on mining and metallurgy published in 1556. The sculpture draws on those images in which women are depicted as participants in the diverse work processes involved in ore extraction – a historical presence that has hitherto received little recognition and is only weakly anchored in the public consciousness.