Fieldnotes IX. RELIQUIE WEIN4 - Spurensicherung Laa

Field Notes: May 30, 2026

Location: former clay pit near Laa an der Thaya

Encounter Summary:

Surface, concealing structure...

The former clay pit near Laa is considered the type locality of the Laa Formation. Yet arriving there feels strangely paradoxical. The pit is no longer a pit. Water has filled the excavation; the exposed walls that once revealed the sediments are hidden beneath a lake. The reference remains, while the exposure has disappeared.

We followed a narrow path through tall wet grass. It had rained earlier, and rain returned intermittently throughout the day. The slope above the lake was slippery, overgrown, difficult to descend. The sedimentary layers themselves remained largely invisible behind vegetation and water.

What could be observed was not the section, but the material.

The surface of the exposed sediment had become smooth and rounded by moisture. Rain had softened edges, blurred contours, redistributed fine particles. Yet beneath this thin wet skin, the material behaved differently. Breaking off a fragment revealed a dry interior. The sediment separated into countless thin plates, disintegrating along invisible planes. The outer surface recorded recent weather. The interior preserved a longer history of deposition.

Small collapses, miniature slopes, fragments breaking apart, surfaces drying at different rates: entire landscapes appeared at the scale of a hand specimen.

Earlier that day we had visited the saline steppe near Zwingendorf. There, salt accumulated on drying mud surfaces; here, water concealed sediment beneath a lake. Both places seemed connected by absence. Neither revealed the Paratethys directly. Instead, they offered traces, residues, delayed effects. Salt crusts. Clay plates. Deposits. Transformations.

Knowledge emerged less through observation than through touch. Through lifting, breaking, feeling resistance and disintegration. The material disclosed itself through its behaviour. The hidden stratigraphy became perceptible not by seeing, but by handling.

A type locality submerged beneath water. A formation encountered through fragments. Sediment speaking from beneath its surface.

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.