Fieldnotes III. RELIQUIE WEIN4 - Spurensicherung Laa

Fieldnotes: February 13, 2026

Location: Abandoned quarry, Ernstbrunn Limestone, Weinviertel/Lower Austria

Encounter Summary:

The path dissolved before we reached it. What had been a marked line on a screen thinned into forest, into hesitation, into the dull arithmetic of poor reception. We moved by contour instead—following slope, light, the faint geometry of cut stone half-remembered from maps—until the trees opened abruptly and the quarry revealed itself.

A vertical face of Ernstbrunn Limestone stood exposed, pale and self-possessed. The surface was fine-grained, almost smooth, as if the sea that once assembled it had preferred precision over spectacle. Several freshly broken blocks lay at the base of the wall. Their fracture planes were clean and matte, but along certain seams small calcite crystals had begun to claim the surface—minute, glassy overgrowths catching light like frost forming from within.

I lifted the blocks, testing their gravity. One rested across my shoulder; another I held directly before me, a temporary horizon. Hand specimens rose to the height of my face until my field of vision narrowed to carbonate. For brief intervals I allowed the substitution to occur: skin for stone, breath for pressure, duration for weight. The limestone did not resist this exchange.

On my palm I balanced smaller fragments, adjusting tendons and angle until equilibrium felt less like control and more like negotiation. Between my hands, a piece hovered—not suspended, but steadied—its mass recalculated through muscle. I began a slow sequence of movement imagining calcite growth: incremental, patient, accretive. Limbs extended as if overgrown by rhombohedral edges, joints articulating under an invisible crystalline logic. The choreography followed no rhythm except that of deposition.

I photographed the stones, cataloguing textures and fracture patterns. I selected specimens in varying scales—fist-sized, shoulder-wide, dust-fine—for later arrangement. Each carried a different density of memory: reefal life compacted, marine chemistry stabilized, tectonic uplift translated into surface.

Standing at the base of the quarry wall, reception still absent, it felt less like being lost and more like being briefly removed from signal—placed instead within a slower transmission: sediment to limestone, limestone to crystal, crystal to gesture.

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.