Fieldnotes IV. RELIQUIE WEIN4 - Spurensicherung Laa

Field Notes: February 13, 2026

Location: Quarry south of Buchberg summit, Weinviertel

Encounter Summary:

The approach began in mud before it became geology. Recent rain and thaw had dissolved the ground into a thick, adhesive mass, each step accumulating weight. The path led through a fenced enclosure—Mufflons somewhere unseen, the suggestion of wild boar—over a narrow crossing and onto a forest track that no longer held its form. The substrate announced itself immediately: clay-rich, cohesive, unwilling to release. With each step, the Grund-Formation made itself known not through outcrop, but through resistance. The feet grew heavy, as if already partially buried.

Loose clasts appeared along the way—fragments of limestone displaced downslope—before the quarry opened, abruptly and without ceremony. The space was partially occupied: feeding stations, containers, vehicles left in suspension, no human presence. The ground was churned, layered with tracks, organic debris, and mud. Movement through it required commitment.

The wall read as a sequence of occupations: biological growth, sediment infill, compaction, exposure.

At the exposed wall, the alternation became visible: dense, bedded limestones of the Mailberg-Formation interlayered with silty units of the Grund-Formation. The limestones, pale grey to ochre, held a quiet density, their surfaces broken by biogenic structures—coralline algae, thick-shelled bivalves, their forms preserved as molds, cavities, and occasional steinkerns. Between them, the finer units appeared softer, more receptive, their boundaries sometimes sharp, sometimes wavering.

I moved closer, tracing the transitions. The contrast was not absolute: solid and soft, resistant and yielding, each dependent on the other’s interruption. The limestones, formed on former shallows, now rested within a matrix that, underfoot, refused stability. Even here, in exposure, nothing felt entirely fixed.

I photographed the surfaces, collected fragments where possible. Some pieces retained the imprint of shells, others only the absence—a negative space marking former presence. The wall read as a sequence of occupations: biological growth, sediment infill, compaction, exposure.

In the open area before the face, I repeated a movement developed earlier in the day: a slow descent, as if the body were losing coherence, returning to particulate form. Here, the gesture required less imagination. The ground accepted weight unevenly; balance shifted, adjusted, failed. The notion of a stable surface dissolved into something provisional.

Standing within the quarry, it became difficult to maintain the distinction between solid ground and accumulated sediment. The formations, though lithified, retained the memory of their origin: not as fixed structures, but as phases within a continuous process of deposition, transformation, and displacement.

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.