start

The vegetables, the bodies, the
human constructions, the frequencies,
the movements,

all that bundles, swinging
from order to chaos, choreographing
the spaces,

signs of resistance and resilience,
containment,

struggle between the differences,
textures of grounds, our bodies
forming landscapes within
landscapes

subtle changes of air
streams of thought.

- Patrick Faurot

The plant species bathed in a fabulous light alternating from pink to blue - anchored in dirt of an unknown origin and isolated from air circulation by layers of insulation wool, plastic foil and survival blankets - were longing to take root. What was contained was flooded with gestures of care. The effort was unhidden and loaded with hope – for growth, for transformation, for a flattered eye, for something to happen, for anything but standstill.

However strong the sucking of the roots was, gravity let the remaining humidity in the soil and moss sink into the depths of the piles. This counter-movement made the earth tremble. The place felt tense and petrified, the roots fatigued – uncontrollable tremors and frequent shivering penetrated their fibers. The setting of a filtered and universalized cross section of what is needed for survival thwarted life paths. The stuffy air started forming enormous, dusty clouds crumbling as the roots lose their strength. Here-, in the midst of dust particles creeping into the plant’s body, damaging their lungs-, a wasteland was created.

They visited the container from time to time - the flow of dehydration remained unnoticed. Time stretched and slipped; movement stiffened. Only with their first inhalation - dust settling in their throat slowly travelling all the way up to their lungs - did an awareness arise of what it means to be out of breath. They felt the change, tasted hints of decay but believed their eyes so that the emergence of rot appeared too sudden.

The vegetables, the bodies, the
human constructions, the frequencies,
the movements,

all that bundles, swinging
from order to chaos, choreographing
the spaces,

signs of resistance and resilience,
containment,

struggle between the differences,
textures of grounds, our bodies
forming landscapes within
landscapes

subtle changes of air
streams of thought.

Thɘy didn’t want to keep distance but thɘir body could not be other than distant. Thɘir anatomy and thɘir size didn’t allow to zoom into the change. Maybe it was about thɘir tendons not being flexible enough or maybe thɘy just experienced thɘir humaneness as limiting for the first time. Maybe thɘir curiosity and thɘir fascination for the intangible brought thɘm closer. Thɘy kept returning every other night. Thɘy weren’t afraid of darkness – weren’t afraid of falling deep into thɘir own uncanny depths.

In thɘir dreams thɘy experienced thɘmselves as an ant, as something smaller, so small you can hardly see it, crawling along on this huge ground:

Thɘir ant sized body traced the blurry contours of a seemingly frozen picture of an arid landscape strewn with plant fossils. The fossilization was a practice on the becoming of an object – a practice in flux. Turning into stone was not a final but transitory state for the plant species which made survival possible across a period of time beyond human survival strategies and imagination.While all of thɘir body became ant-like, thɘir eyes remained human – except of its adaptation in scale. The experience of getting that close without a nose in the way, and the desire to perceive otherwise sinking into blurriness, resembled the scanning possibilities of a camera lens.

Basil,

Monstera Deliciosa,

different sorts of lichens,

rosemary,

Epipremnum pinnatum,

Sansevieria,

Cephalocereus,

Cycas Revoluta,

dandelion,

Ariocarpus...

houseplants,

weeds from a nearby garden or meadow,

mushrooms from a nearby forest,

ARID CONDITIONS -

The other night thɘy went on an uncanny journey in the Ariocarpus region: Thɘir ant sized body travelled through the species’ stiffened extremities bending under the weight of stone dust and forming a long, narrow tunnel where eyes lost their purpose. Thɘy reached out thɘir antennas, climbed the curved wall without losing crip, exited and re-entered the tunnel through its roof hatches that were a surprisingly soft, nearly squashy cracks. Thɘy trusted the antennas, the body hair, and the sensory pores enough to know that thɘy wouldn’t get lost. But allowing porousness was frightening.

Thɘy couldn’t help the blackish discolored sweat leaking through the pores of thɘir skin and accumulating into the ground. The puddles forming under thɘir back, the soggy panties and salt residues under thɘir armpits felt like a release from imagery loaded with monstrousness, anxiety and disgust.
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By now it was early spring and they cut parts of the container open.

Little peepholes of linear and triangular shape dotted its walls.

A flock of an uncountable number of particles tickled thɘir nostrils and soon covered thɘir body like a light quilt cover in that sticky summer night.

A fierce wind pierced through the holes and whirled up the stone dust covering the species’ necks.

Despite the full light spectrum hitting thɘir face, the urge to get up stayed away.

Thɘir physical presence felt light and heavy, familiar and alien at the same time.

Thɘy noticed a tingling sensation under thɘir back. In words of identifiable imagery, the container resembled an active whirlpool missing water to form air bubbles in. Thɘir antennas recognized the warm accumulating pile of lively matter – a wetscapeland bubbling in dried grounds. Thɘir sweat formed small geysers underground, erupting from the depth tenderly.

Bubbles filled with discolored liquid popped on the surface of the two piles of soil, shooting into the plant fossils’ bodies, bursting them open like insect eggs the moment the newborns leave their cocoon.

Sometimes fossils are taken for granite.
Everything is being taken for granite sometimes but they are not granite and should not be taken for it.
If they are stone, they are clay – or not even clay but mud.
They absorb the water through their porous membranes greedily and find joy in disaggregating into broken fragments, dissolving into mud.
Mud lies around being wet and heavy and oozy and generative.
Mud is underfoot.
It has its own nature but it is not a hard nature, or upstanding, or gemlike.
It's deeply impressionable. It's squashy.

(– as well as from Jenny Hval’s book titled “Paradise Rot”.)

is based on a site-specific installation of an arid landscape strewn with plant fossils built of unfired clay in an old shipping container. It deals with the notion of a mutated nature - imagined, yet botanically believable. In the frame of Root Proposals - a cooperation between the international study program Choreography and Performance at the Institute for Applied Theatre Studies at Gießen University and the digital platform of Künstlerhaus Mousonturm in Frankfurt a.M. - the work manifests in the form a poetic multimedia article presented by Digital Mousonturm and Re-Connect Online Performance Festival; as well as liquifies in the form of a one-to-one performative happening in the container situated at the Strahlenzentrum in Gießen. Its material fragments - the intangible memory and the paradise rot it holds - constitute both a living archive and a breeding ground for future manifestations.
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©Viccy Link

Clay Playing with:
Anna Lublina, Laura Stellacci, Luciana Chieregati, Elena Light, Darío Barreto Damas, Eva Streit, Aleksandar Georgiev

Sounding with:
Paula Noack, Laura Stellacci

Filming and Photographing with:
Sophia Scherer, Ruth Süpple

Reading and Text Editing with:
Amina Szecsödy Olsson, Anna Lublina, Elena Light, Laura Stellacci, Ariana Battaglia, Patrick Faurot

A special thanks goes to Patrick Faurot who handed over the X-Jungle container at Strahlenzentrum to me for the past month to grow an arid landscape that constitutes the base of this work.
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CREDITS -

Multidisciplinary artist working at the interface of Choreography, Performance, Installation, Sculpture and Sound.

She is currently enrolled in the MA Choreography and Performance at the Institute of Applied Theatre Studies in Gießen.

Contact: mara.kirchberg@outlook.de
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A work by Mara Kirchberg

__________

listener,

eye,

viewer,

ear,

lecture.

(The words in this paragraph are inspired and borrowed from Ursula K. Le Guin’s “Being taken for granite”: http://artandcrap.com/ensayos/ursula-k-le-guin-being-taken-for-granite/.)

Thɘir skin pores widen and thɘy let thɘmselves be penetrated by the stream without feeling horrified or anxious. Thɘy find an uncanny pleasure in extending into the space forefeeling the breeding ground that this black layer of the microbial mat constitutes by decomposing and re-cycling matter. And so, when they walk away from the paradise rot they are not changed, except their feet are muddy, thɘy changed into the fluid nature of clay.

- DO NOT TAKE ME FOR GRANITE