Voyager's Record
(2018)
author(s): Paulina Brelińska
published in: Research Catalogue
Point of departure.
The exhibition "The Voyager's Record" refers to traveling as such a form of mobility, which results from the
internal need to see inaccessible, undiscovered, lost and mysterious places. Its title refers to the name of two
gold-plated disks - The Voyager Golden Record - which was placed in the 1970s on board of spacecraft
launched as part of the Voyager program. There were some specific recordings and photographs on these disks
that were supposed to show the life cycle of the human species on Earth to the extraterrestrial viewers. The
exhibition showing the latest works created by young artists figuratively refers to the untamed dreams of seeing
unknown lands and what is more the cosmos. Artists’ projects pay attention to the images and elements of
nature that interest them during their “expeditions” (expedition is translated as “mobility organized for a specific
purpose”). Such concept situates the artist in the position of a researcher/explorer who archives/documents
reality and nature for a specific purpose. These objects are deprived of the features of the “artifact” (translated as
“incorrect element of the scientific research result”). On the contrary, they become a specific scientific record
depicting life on Earth.
During the nineteenth century, when the ideological trend called romanticism was developing, the author of the
book “COSMOS. Alexander Humboldt's physical description of the world” noticed that nature is a constant
object of the discoverer's fascination. When observing the works of contemporary artists, the aforementioned
glorification of nature seems to be still super important. Humboldt wrote: "Children's joy at the sight of the
particular figures of the countries and the closed seas, as geographical cards show us; the desire to see the
constellations of the southern sky that are not on our firmament; images of palm and Lebanon cedars in the holy
scriptures; they are all things as an example cited, and which are capable of awakening in the young soul
unreasonable desire to see distant lands.”
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The exhibition is a story about spiritual travels, as well as about feelings that accompany the search for one's
own nature. Staying in a state of suspension, properly distant from reality, very credible memorabilia arise -
telling a lot about the Earth itself. However, it is not so much its scientific portrait that is important but the
presentation of our planet from the perspective of the internal experiences of its inhabitants.
Paulina Brelińska
Still Moving
(2017)
author(s): Juriaan Achthoven, Rhian Morris
published in: Research Catalogue
The startingpoint of "Still Moving" has been: to map and perform an artistic process in which the aim is to create a scenographic poem. If poetry is about 'feeling in language' (Eliot), then scenographic poetry is about feeling in the materiality of a spatial-temporal composition. We have started to work with an actor, live video technology and 'Four Quartets' by T.S. Eliot. Throughout the process the main ingredients have shifted towards: the breath of the actor, a lot of soil and sensor-technology. The research question has been evolving from an interest in the concept of 'presence', towards an interest in rhythms of the body in relation to rhythms of the earth, towards an interest in the materiality of the ingredients.
This page is meant to give insight into our process of creation.
Soil Stories, Touching with your Eyes and Seeing with you Hands
(last edited: 2023)
author(s): Nalani Kailing Knauss
connected to: Royal Academy of Art, The Hague
This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
I excavate soil’s history using the lenses of photography, geology, etymology, and anthropology. As a visual storyteller, I engage with soil while digging deeper to address questions of human relationship to the natural world and the feeling of being held within the landscape. I use soil as a metaphor for my personal search for belonging.
Can a visceral, human relationship to the earth beneath our feet help us in our fundamental search for connection? As I unearth humanity’s history, delving into all things soil, starting from an exploration of myths and indigenous beliefs, I start to reflect on my own relationship with the California landscape that I call home. I explore what it means to belong and reconnect. Through the physicality of foraging and making with clay, in combination with photographing rocks as my subjects I reflect on belonging as a human connection to place within nature. I write about the split and alienation humanity has gone though of viewing nature as something separate. The disconnection of the right side of the brain with its childlike playfulness, feeling, wondering, and meandering in comparison with modern life’s prioritization of the left brain with its over efficiency and logic.
What would happen if we started to think about soil as a living body and even as a form of language? This substance that we deem inanimate and dirty, and which we mindlessly dump our waste onto, is the memory keeper of human history.
Beneath the layers of substrate, I am curious as to what terminology we use and why. How are the words we use meaningful, and how do they impact our belief systems and values? Can we unlearn the notion that dirt is dirty? What do words say about other words? How can we redefine our language and in so doing change our belief systems which then affect the way we portray, represent, or photograph the natural world?
Photographic language is also a vehicle for the communication of certain narratives, which in my work I use as documentation. Through photography, I engage in a sensual experience of earth in all its substantive expressions: skin, soil, dust, rock, water. Soil and photography share a similar language. When viewing photography or connecting with earth, the audience leaves with an impression, a trace, which then affects the viewer. As a visual storyteller, I strive to awaken a remembering of ancestral knowledge and remind people of their primal kinship with earth.
Questions arise such as how do we engage with touch? What do we even sense in the landscape of our own body? What does this form of re-earthing and re-wording look like? Within a society that is fueled by consumerism and the all-important “I” as ego, can we, when relating to the natural landscape remember what it means to be collectively human in a symbiotic relationship with soil? Can we create a deeper relationship with something as simple as the ground beneath our feet?
My research has been informed by many a author such as Ursula K. le Guin- The Carrier Basket Theory, Dark Ecology by Timothy Morton, Braiding Sweetgrass- Robin Wall Kimmerer
Staying with the Trouble - Donna Haraway, Spell of the Sensuous David Abrum, Tim Ingold and the discourse surrounding Stadium General here at KABK
Hearing Geoelectric
(last edited: 2023)
author(s): Raviv Ganchrow
connected to: KC Research Portal
This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
Geological minerals (such as copper, quartz and mica) are embedded in audio circuits and conversely geological processes are teeming with electrical activity. Power grids and Integrated circuits could be described as important waypoints in the domestication of lightning. Advanced methods of geo-sensing and globally coordinated sensor networks are currently plumbing Earth attributes by way of its signals: By way of electrical transduction (vibrations converted into electrical fluctuations) or by directly tapping into ground conductivity (telluric current monitoring and geoelectrical methods). Our growing awareness of earthly variations in voltage manifest a complex intertwining of the geologic, the electric and the technic. What are the terrestrial contexts of audio circuits and conversely what electrical circuitry is at work in geology? What does Earth's circuitry sound like? How can such geoelectric hearing redress the binaries of 'natural' and 'technical' in particular with respect to recordings overt mimetic properties? This research aims to develop non-standard tools for environmental voltage acquisition while looking into historical contexts of geoelectrical methods as a means of bridging the geological dimensions in electronic audio towards contemporary modes of environmental listening and hearing.