Fieldnotes VI. RELIQUIE WEIN4 - Spurensicherung Laa

Field Notes: April 9, 2026

Location: Approximate margin of the Iván Canyon, east of Laa an der Thaya

Encounter Summary:

We arrived at a place defined almost entirely by inference. A few kilometers east of the former clay pit at Laa, the landscape remained quiet—fields, gentle slopes, no visible rupture. And yet, beneath this surface, a canyon persists.

Based on distance and direction, we approximated the position: several kilometers east of the former clay pit at Laa, approaching the boundary of the Waschberg Zone.

The Iván Canyon was carved by a river when this region stood above sea level. Later, during transgression, it was submerged, filled, and extended into the basin as a submarine channel. Today, it runs invisibly beneath the sediments, its course traced only through seismic data: a sinuous incision, roughly north–south, reaching depths of around 200 meters here, and further north, considerably more.

Standing at its inferred edge, there was no visual confirmation—no break in slope, no shadow of depth. The ground held. Still, the idea of the canyon imposed itself. I stepped forward cautiously, as if approaching a drop. The body responded before the eye could - weight shifting slightly forward, as if responding to a drop that was not perceptible.

I moved along what could be its margin, arms extended, entering a space that no longer opens. The gesture followed the imagined descent, tracing a void now occupied by sediment. Beneath the fields, the former valley continues—its shape preserved, its depth concealed.

To stand here is to look into something that cannot be seen, only known: a buried landscape, intact in structure, absent in appearance.

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.

Based on scientific information from: Rudolf Dellmour, Mathias Harzhauser (2012): The Iván Canyon, a large Miocene canyon in the Alpine-Carpathian Foredeep