Field Notes VIII. RELIQUIE WEIN4 - Spurensicherung Laa

Field Notes: Late Spring, 2026Location: Ernstbrunn area / Mailberg slope (April 25) / Studio (April 27-29)

Encounter Summary:

The return to the field revealed a shift in state. What had been mud in winter was now dust. The Laa Formation slope near Mailberg appeared loosened, its former cohesion dispersed. Rill marks traced earlier water flow, but much of the layering had softened into a more uniform surface. I lifted fine material and released it into the air—briefly suspending the sediment before it settled again, a temporary visibility of grain and gravity.

In the dry grassland, Ernstbrunn limestone persisted as scattered reading stones. I searched for larger fragments, selecting and lifting them for future use, while earlier interventions—a serpentine line of stones—remained, partially absorbed by vegetation.

The work continued in the studio as a translation of states rather than sites. Saltwater was poured onto paper and left to evaporate, forming crystalline residues that mapped the outlines of a receding body—traces of transgression and regression. On larger sheets, I introduced Laa sediment into the liquid surface: grains settled, accumulated, and, once dried, marked a sedimented “shoreline” within a salt crust. The paper itself folded and warped under moisture, creating depressions and rises—small basins, thresholds, shifting depths.

The processes observed in the field reappeared here without instruction, unfolding at a smaller scale through the material itself.

Clay-rich material from the Laa Formation was rehydrated, kneaded, and formed into spheres of varying scale. Some enclosed small printed foraminifera, embedded as internal structures. Mixed with saltwater, the material behaved differently—more viscous, more unstable—its consistency altered by salinity. The Grund Formation, lighter in color, produced a distinct, more yellow-toned paste, its difference already familiar from the field underfoot.

As water entered the sediment, a quiet, irregular sound emerged—the material registering its own saturation.

On dark paper, I worked directly with the sediment—spreading, pressing, tracing with the hands. Wet surfaces appeared unexpectedly luminous, almost metallic, before drying into matte, fractured layers that resisted adhesion and began to detach. Images captured through scanning translated these textures again, shifting between legibility and abstraction.

Elsewhere, a latex cast of a bivalve mold was filled with Laa sediment, its outcome uncertain—whether it will release or remain bound within the form.

Across all processes, the material moved between conditions: cohesive and dispersive, saturated and desiccated, structured and formless. What began as sediment in the field continues here as behavior—recorded not as fixed object, but as transformation.

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.