Fieldnotes V. RELIQUIE WEIN4 - Spurensicherung Laa

Field Notes: March, 2026

Location: Studio / Post-field observations

Encounter Summary:

The field continued in the studio, though the scale shifted and the ground became a table. The collected fragments—stones, silts, compacted clays—were laid out and sorted, not by taxonomy but by relation. Fine particles gathered into loose constellations, their distribution resembling a form of writing: granular, discontinuous, unreadable yet deliberate.

I rolled spheres from the different sediments again, repeating the gesture from the field under controlled conditions. Once dried, they hardened beyond expectation—small, dense bodies, resistant, almost stone-like. What had been pliable became fixed, the transformation occurring quietly, without visible threshold.

Some samples were placed into small glass vessels, sealed with cork, then submerged in water. The response varied: certain fragments held, others dissolved or released fine clouds into suspension. The water thickened, carried, settled. Sedimentation resumed at a reduced scale, a contained system of disintegration and reformation.

A series of Ernstbrunn limestone pieces was arranged by size, forming a gradual sequence from weight to fragment. Nearby, I traced their outlines in graphite, translating mass into line, surface into gesture. The act of drawing did not reproduce the stone but followed its resistance, its interruptions.

On dark paper, I poured saltwater and allowed it to evaporate. Crystalline residues formed slowly, irregular and pale, mapping the movement of the liquid as it withdrew. In some areas I repeated the process—layering solution over crust—building thin accumulations that echoing cycles of transgression and regression. The surface held a quiet record of these phases: deposition, desiccation, return.

At intervals, I replayed a recording made in the field—the sound of water entering the sediments of the Laa- and Grund-formations. A soft, granular intake, almost imperceptible, as if the material were drawing the liquid inward. In the studio, this sound detached from its source, becoming a trace of permeability, of absorption, of the unseen movement within fine-grained matter.

What remained consistent between field and studio was not the material itself, but its behavior: the tendency to shift between states—solid, plastic, suspended, crystalline. Each arrangement, each gesture, each experiment revealed not an object, but a condition.

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.