LANDLINE / WATERLINE
Landline/Waterline is a collection of bottled soil and water specimens arranged in separate shelf compartments. It is an archive of place in the shape of a sculptural installation that takes viewers back and forth in time. The work references temporality and seasonal fluctuations in nature through the accumulation of organic residue over a period of time.
In total, the sculpture comprises forty-eight bottles. Half the bottles contain soil specimens while the other half contain water specimens and each bottle is labeled accordingly. The artwork is intended to investigate the temporality of place; how place responds to time. The soil and water specimens gain the ability to communicate time when enclosed in glass bottles and placed within compartments. Time appears to flow through the work. Identical compartments resonate with the ticking of the clock; structured and equidistant. However, Landline/Waterline is non-chronological. It disrupts time, cuts it into pieces, and re-assembles it to form a non-linear narrative.
Landline/Waterline, soil, water, wood, glass, cork,, labels, 48 bottles x 4 shelves 74cm x 10cm x 4.5cm, 2014
Diverse in their similarities the specimens tell of the passing of time reminding us of Lefebvre’s assertion that nature is an indicator of time. The work reterritorialises place and time into a restricted space; it forms an imaginary straight line. The line is comprised of points in time(s); however, as Merleau-Ponty (2012, p.440) argues ‘[t]ime is not a line…’.
“For every moment that arrives, the previous moment suffers a modification: I still hold it in hand, it is still there, and yet it already sinks back, it descends beneath the line of presents” - Merleau-Ponty, 2012, p.439.
The longevity of the project is determined by a full cycle spanning a whole year during which the place underwent considerable environmental variations. Specimens were collected from the same place over a period of twelve months. The work connects past, present and future through matter. It constitutes a temporal narrative that is set to continue to accumulate time.
- Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception.
Landline/Waterline, In Between, Galleria Biffi Arte, Piacenza, Italy, 2018
Landline/Waterline, In Between, Galleria Biffi Arte, Piacenza, Italy, 2018
Collecting soil and water specimens.
