To look at soil and see more than dirt / Rijksakademie
To look at soil and see more than dirt brings together histories of collective working, protest, and the built environment.
The video work (of the same name) depicts a series of post-industrial sites as the mise-en-scenefor a semi-fictional group. In amongst the residue of industry, the group meet to address a friction in the collective. Through mobilising the geographically disparate collections of the Fritz-Hüser-Institut in Dortmund, the Ruhr Museum in Essen and the Glasgow Women’s Library, two post-industrial landscapes are thrust into dialogue.
In all the time we were together
we were also apart
and had never met.
The film is shown on an LED screen, installed on a repurposed steel frame. The structure traces the lines of the studio’s former architecture, when the building of the Rijksakademie was a pharmaceutical warehouse.
Exhaust, a falling chimney in three parts, is built in the same red clay found in industrial processes. The erection stumbles to the height of a domestic space, where land and labour are totally exhausted. A landmark to collectivity attempting to correct its posture.
In between hang works from the ongoing series of lead reliefs, formed from recycled roofing lead. Imprinted into the surface are traces of our built environment, the tools and taps and pipes that service the spaces we build. The lead, treated to eliminate its toxicity, holds these forms as fossils.
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