CORE_RUPTION: a chorus of touch

A workshop, a meeting, with clay and sediment,

of time, nature, history, and the fantasies of our senses

And so we meet on a sunny day, the air filled with pollen.
It doesn't matter so much but maybe I notice the pollen even more these days since I'm connecting with the piece of mud "the core" taken from lake "Vombsjön". Connecting with the knowledge that it is in fact containing over 10 000 year old pollen.
Then again the pollen from today is inhabiting and inhibiting my body in some rather unpleasant ways and I am actually allergic to nature. A small paradoxal tragedy in itself. But now I am thinking about the actual layer it creates, and how it is a witness of our time and the nature of it back when, bearing witness to another nature, then.

We move inside to a seemingly pollenless area, we go inside my ceramic studio in Sankt Olof, about 40 min east of the origin of the core, Vombsjön.

The invitation itself to engage in "the core" is of a performative nature, it "does something". The packages of mud sediment feels magical, delicate, and I didnt want to open it in fear of contamination for a long time. But now here we are in the studio and the idea of contamination seems far away and I am ready for it to become something else, other, unforseen, new magic, into another story, another narrative. From something to something.

But not only is the invitation to "the core" as a piece of mud performative, but the invitation by Josefin is an invitation to relate and to exist in an active poetic way that allows for a gentle contemplative threading. As a human in our habitat. A subtle rewiring of relations.

We open a package of clay from Fyledalen, called "Fyle-lera", it is a high fire clay, stoneware clay, naturally sourced about 20 minutes south of Sankt Olof. But to most people it is known to be a local clay in Gotland because that is where it has been transported after the sourcing for cleaning and packaging. So now we have a locally sourced yet from Gotland-imported package of clay in our hands. This is probably the last package I will ever have because the land owner in Fyledalen decided that was it.

The clay is dark and soft and when it is burnt it will become light brown and impermeable. No contamination issues there. The idea is that we merge them, the mud from the core on top of the local stoneware clay. Layer them. The clay from Fyledalen is "stable" in the sense that at 1260 degrees it will stay solid. The Core is uncertain. Yet to find out.

We meet the clay and we are all committed to letting the meeting happen in a sort of thoughtless space, well, so we let the hands and the clay be at work as we distract our minds with a conversation about how our bodies last felt in touch with nature. As if our bodies are something separate we can talk about, and yes we can. We are human. We talk. We talk about ourselves and our experiences. We approach the clay as our teacher, a piece of nature, we can call it material, that is guiding us to some place we might not have gone to otherwise. We are still there, noticing the meeting and the interaction of transformation and the generated movements.

The sediment from the bottom of the lake Vombsjön is full of time, pollen, earth, dirt, it will meet Fyledalen and change shape in the heat of the kiln. After the firing it can no longer be contaminated or changed by oxidation. Not that I ever had any idea what the loss or value of oxidation would be for the core or for me, but it is a strong chemical reaction and it is so beyond my capacity to control. In the process of burning it I let myself belive that the outcome is my wish. I am open for any result. Oxidation on the other hand sounds like something I have no part in. And I want to be a part of it. The core and the clay will become a memory in time with a new expression, color, structure, feeling. Curiosity and a longing to connect brings us to meetings with materials and other humans, and through our observations we create meaning and care.  

Our hands are absorbing the moisture of the clay, and then we integrate it with fragments of the core. The core, consisting of unknown particles, minerals, metals, might melt and destroy the kiln so we keep the Fyle-clay as a barrier and protector from the past unknown material we have at hand. Before firing we let the clay, now shaped in various ways beyond ideas of use or function, dry completely. It will stay like that until the project will have its final stage, mouldering away in a to us invisible way before we let it become a waterproof time document, a vessel of nature and humans.  

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