Field Notes I. RELIQUIE WEIN4 - Spurensicherung Laa

Field Notes: December 20, 2025 Location: Mailberg vicinity, Lower Austria

The Laa-Formation revealed itself today in the quiet act of rolling. I pressed handfuls of the mixed sand-and-silt layers, shaping them into small, dense spheres that held together with surprising cohesion. Some were smooth and firm, others softer, tending toward collapse under the gentlest touch. Each ball was a miniature record of the river and storm currents that once transported these grains, a tactile archive of energy and stillness.

Among these pliable spheres, I discovered pockets of harder, calcareous nodules embedded within the silty matrix. Some resisted my fingers, solid and weighty, while others crumbled immediately, reducing to fine, chalky dust that betrayed their previous cohesion. They were almost perfectly round, like tiny pebbles preserved in time, yet fragile in the hand. Perhaps they are mikritic clasts—remnants of calcified microstructures or early diagenetic concretions—but even without certainty, they spoke clearly of episodic chemistry and compaction in the Laa-Formation.

I spent long minutes rolling, pressing, and observing, feeling the interplay of softness and resistance, fragility and cohesion. Each motion revealed the sediment’s dual nature: playful in its malleability, yet patient in the way it preserves traces of its formation, quietly recording currents, pauses, and subtle chemical transformations in its fine-grained fabric.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4TBVSw523_U

Research RELIQUIE WEIN4 - Spurensicherung Laa. Project by nagl～wintersberger, Wein/4-Festival Niederösterreich 2026. Opening June 2026, Kunsthaus Laa.

*Note: These field notes are part of an art-based research practice, informed by geology but written as poetic, interpretive observations rather than scientific documentation.