EDGE EFFECTS
Natural Movements at Farrera’s Edge
Edge Effects, natural movements on the edge of Farrera, is an exhibition featuring the work of artists Anna Rubio, Quelic Berga, Joanès Simon-Perret, Kati Gausmann, Nabb & Teeri, Tuula Närhinen, and Tracey Warr.
It is curated by Lluís Llobet, Lluís Sabadell Artiga, Pere Báscones i Marta Prunera.
For there to be natural movements, you need three essential elements: energy, time and material. The occurrence of these movements pours out in constant transformations, evolving in a set direction. They constitute an unfolding of energy which, as time goes by, leaves imprints in the material.
The evolution of the biosphere, in time and in a complex network, has permitted many species, such as now our own, to exist. At a certain time and place in the biosphere, a living being accumulates the biological knowledge that has permitted it to arrive here after millions of years of experience and selection. A being of our human species, moreover, includes all the layers of sediments lived through, both the obvious and the most subtle: his body, his territory, his culture, his character, memory, emotions, relationships, reasoning, awareness, attitude…
Here and now, individually and collectively, is a moment of doubt about where we are and where we are going. How are we confronting the environmental crisis over the relationship between our species and the biosphere that surrounds us? And from our daily activity, how can artistic creation contribute to our reaching this environmental equilibrium, as well as its social and economic ancillaries?
The on-line exhibition, Natural Movements on the Edge of Farrera, gathers together the work of eight artists who passed through the Centre for Art and Nature via the European programme, Frontiers in Retreat. As a working residency for artists and researchers that springs up and grows in a tiny village in the High Catalan Pyrenees, the restless movement of creators and researchers is already a natural phenomenon in our local biosphere. The challenge we have as a global society is to reach a way of living and of social organization that is both harmonious and sustainable. From this tiny place and our humble activity we share with you these reflections made by the artists themselves.
Thanks to Quelic, Kati, Janne, Maria, Tuula, Anna, Joannès and Tracey, for your contributions!
This exhibition has been shaped by 8 areas defined by diverse attitudes, states of mind or directly, by actions that the artists propose in order to confront these new challenges:
1// To understand nature and learn from it
2// To re-naturalise our lives
3// To reduce the impact of our footprint
4// To play in order to grow and be happy
5// To listen to the spirit of the place
6// To live in the here and now, and let ourselves be surprised
7// To cultivate a universal awareness
8// To come closer to new paradigms
While borders draw divisive lines, frontiers are transition and contact zones. Diversity is always richest in areas where different ecosystems meet: This is the edge effect. An encounter never leaves one unaffected.
In the five-year international collaboration project Frontiers in Retreat (2013–2018), seven residency sites at the edges of Europe have been approached using various artistic and multidisciplinary methods. These remote sites are seen as frontiers where entanglements between human and other life forms become tangible. They allow insight into the entwined processes of ecological, social, and economic change – in their local manifestations and across a planetary scale.
The project has mapped out artistic practices that respond to ecological concerns, and explored the diverse ways in which ecology can be perceived and approached. In total 25 artists have been invited to conduct research and produce new work in response to particular ecosystems. Their research has ranged across fjords, forests, islands, villages, towns, cities, and mountains in Iceland, Finland, Scotland, Latvia, Lithuania, Serbia, and Spain. Throughout the project, the participating artists and organisations have challenged the initial premises of the project – productively, towards increased diversity. Rather than a fixed set of theories, concepts, and methods, there are multiple voices and views, positions and practices: the edge effect, indeed.
In 2017, Frontiers in Retreat organises the exhibition series Edge Effects. Its seven satellite exhibitions weave together the geographically dispersed processes and key discourses developed during the past four years. Besides reflecting the differences and resonances between the particular Frontiers sites, these discussions migrate into a new context via a group exhibition at Art Sonje Center in Seoul.
Through creating a platform for shared inquiry, Frontiers in Retreat has brought seven geographically dispersed sites closer to each other on the world map. Instead of conventional cartography, the process has resembled a kind of deep mapping: while engaging with the unique characteristics of each site, the participants have also learned about the complex co-dependencies and forces shaping habitats, human and non-human life trajectories, and migration patterns globally.
In the ethos of Frontiers in Retreat, the 2017–2018 Edge Effects events pose critical questions about the constitution of frontiers and boundaries. Another focus is the search for a new paradigm beyond the fossil-fuelled modes of living that are inevitably coming to an end. These focal points are being kept in mind while acknowledging that art should not be instrumentalised for the purposes of finding simplistic solutions. Instead, it can reveal conflicts within our values, formulate questions that challenge the status quo, and create a space for discussion and debate. As the Frontiers project continues as an open platform that branches out to new contexts, further edge effects can be expected.
Jenni Nurmenniemi
Curator, Frontiers in Retreat; HIAP – Helsinki International Artist Programme
Taru Elfving
Curator, Project initiator and curatorial advisor
1// To understand nature and learn from it
One of the constants in art has been to search for ways of representing nature in order to explain it to ourselves. In every epoch the most innovative technologies of the moment have been pressed into service. The present day this is no exception. In this sense, Pollen Still Life explores the correspondence between the forms of minuscule entities like pollen and the organic forms that we come across in our everyday surroundings: the circle and spherical forms (together with derived forms such as the ovoid, hexagonal and conical…) are the most common ones in nature together with the other great family of fractal forms.
“Inside the rooms of the eco-art residence, the diverse litter of objects that we found builds unstoppably on dressers, shelves, and window sills, like a layer of pollen settles on the surface of a windscreen. Pollen Still Life, which at first glance seems to mimic an electron microscope photograph, has been assembled from this material. This pseudo-microscopical landscape consists of ornamental pumpkins, pine cones, bones, stones, sponges, muslin bundles, and seed-cases, amongst other things. The objects have been 3D scanned and their scale has been manipulated in the process.”
Nabb & Teeri
Local Colours, Local rocks, Local winds
Tuula Narhinen
Local Colours (Colors Locals) “is an archive of water colour paintings (13×9 cm each). The two different colour collections or palettes both consist of circa 60 paintings. They attempt to map out and compare the autumn and the spring sceneries in the valley around Farrera.
In addition to the paintings, the work contains a series of digital photographs that document every location where the colours were painted”
Tuula Närhinen
Local Rocks (Piedras locales) “Farrera is derived from the Catalan word “ferro” meaning iron. The Pyrenean rock abounds with minerals such as iron, lead, silver and cobalt. To my astonishment, the colourful slabs were soft enough to hand grind into pigment powder that mixed with water from a nearby brook could be used as paint. The series of small “rock paintings” (13×9 cm each) show the spectrum of six different pigments extracted from the stones.”
Tuula Närhinen
Local winds (Vents locals) “occur on a small spatial scale and they are greatly influenced by the topography of the site. Using a self-made kite equipped with an action camera, I set out to record the movement and the breath of the wind on video.
The kite with the video camera presents the landscape from an atmospheric perspective that reveals the airborne sound and point of view peculiar to the turbulent and unruly mountain winds.”
Tuula Närhinen
What defines the essence of a place? How may the landscape of the Catalan Pyrenees be compared with the Finnish landscape? Tuula Närhinen experiments, in the series Local, with observing the landscape of Farrera through its colours, its stones, water and wind. Tuula observes and meticulously classifies the information just as a researcher would do. In this work, scientific method and artistic focus meet to offer a fresh look at the natural elements of the landscape around us as well as at those as yet unknown to us.
Capturing time has been one of the principal longings of artists who want to represent nature. In Kati Gausmann’s case, she is aware that the mountain formations are in fact movements of the past frozen in nature, preserved in the geology of the place, in the basic material: rock and stones. In this way, her work turns into a search for different ways of representing this time and those movements that have become solidified through the shapes of the stones and mountains of Farrera.
“I am fascinated by the way that rock is moved by natural forces over different periods of time, e.g. the drift of the continental plates over millions of years.
I am fascinated by how rock is formed and what movements come about during this, like the upthrust of mountains as well as their constant erosion due to the movements of wind and water.
The movements may be slow, quick, continual, jerky, soft, rough…”Kati Gausmann
“
These patterns of movement seem to me like dances, physical-chemical choreographies, which appear quite light despite their inconceivable dimensions, and which I would like to trace.
The earth, its rock seems to me like a dough that forms in movement, and is formed by movements, dancing, a dancing dough with its own temporal beat and rhythm in the varying climatic conditions in each case.”
Kati Gausmann
“Long ago in the Farrera area, two continental plates met and created the high Pyrenees.
Because they were equally heavy, no subduction took place (unless there has been an ocean between them). The material crashed, broke, crumpled, folded ..
I want to sense and see and draw traces of this powerful concurrence.”Kati Gausmann
“During my two-month-stay in Farrera in March/April 2017, I worked with Frottage (a graphical technique) and with moulding parts of the mountains’ rocks.
Some of these latex-mouldings are treated as objects. Others are used as printing plates. The latex-form is printed with stamping ink on paper by using a rolling pin. This process creates a minimal in-motion unsharpness.
I name these works ‘mountain print’.”Kati Gausmann
2// To re-naturalise our lives
To reconnect our human essence with natural elements is one of the fundamental points in order to re-establish ecological balance on our planet. This work understands Stones as part of our being, reminding us of the dichotomy between fragility and hardness which characterises us on the physical as much as the psychic level, the scale of geological time that relocates us in the right place. It is the admiration for the history of millions of years which stones represent, starting from an almost imperceptible movement. It is an act of homage to the material that antedates life, on the part of life.
“Exploring the environment I realize that the Stones are not only part of the landscape, but also part of ourselves. We are hardness and fragility, within the history of the place and within the history of our being. The stone and me, the matter and the ethereal”.
Anna Rubio
The relationship between the city and the natural world has always been perceived by us as one of conflicting opposites, In the work, In One Thousand Years – Microcity, Joanès Simon-Perret creates an installation in one corner of the studio at the Centre of Art and Nature, to simulate a micro-city. With the passing of time, the plants and living creatures retake the urban space, the prevailing force of the natural world imposes itself. Three scant minutes sum up the real experience of 20 days: the “natural movements” in his micro-city speak to us about the regenerating capacity of the natural world: what would it be capable of doing in a thousand years?
“In 1000 years is a growing installation where a small spring is flowing all year. This little model belongs to a larger series of growing models in different materials that I have been exploring for several years. The buildings were made with local natural clay found on the river near the residency. By placing those small skyscrapers in a natural place I am giving the city back to nature. During 20 days, nature quickly takes advantage of the city, helped by the insects which were passing over it every night. Nature reinvents itself over the city until it swallows it completely. A vision of green renaissance!”
Joanès Simon Perret
3// To reduce the impact of our footprint
All living beings generate an impact on their surroundings, and transform them. From the linking together of these transformations comes the vital equilibrium of a group of species, the present base of our existence. But when this balance is disturbed, the whole system is put in danger. The impact of our actions as human beings on the Earth is being measured over several aspects, but the facts or the numbers often fail to transmit the reality that is hidden behind them. Square mEATers sets out clearly via the visualisation of information the impact our habits as eaters and consumers are having.
“Square mEATers is a very simple action in the landscape of the Farrera valley, covering part of the fields which animals use to graze, to visualize data. It occupies the number of square meters of land needed to grow enough food for a vegan, for a vegetarian and for a meat-eater over the period of a week. The piece, obviously site-specific, does not intend to be a work of land-art, but rather a simple data visualization that encourages two different points of view: from the village you can see the circles in the immensity of the landscape and perceive their proportion in a natural environment; and on the other hand, if you walk down to the fields next to the artwork, you understand the human dimensions of the piece, helping you to comprehend the impact of choices in a very direct way.”
Quelic Berga
“This ephemeral installation took place in the framework of the High Pyrenees SAÓ festival, where for years and years a sustainable model of raising animals (extensive system) and meat consumption have been practised, and where I found a perfect place to set up this artwork that intends to raise awareness of how big the impact of our habits as consumers is in the context of intensive production”.
Quelic Berga
wet
dew
puddle
the little tributaries of the river are more in number than your eyelashes
are we water illiterate?
ford, where human meets water
brook
stream
water is 4.4 billion years old, a space traveller from the Milky Way
the water you drink has been through the bladder of a tyrannosaurus rex and in many other places
spring
torrent
whatering hole
flowing
falling
tumbling
splashing
bubbling
meander
eddy
vortex
oxigen i hidrogen s'aparellen
the matrix of all life
detergent kills the motility of water
metamorphoses as vapour, mist, cloud, rain, sleet, snow, hail, ice
water spends nine days in the sky and falls again
the different smells of water: after rain, on a tomato plant, the smell of snow, of humidity
merely parting the grass like a parting in your hair at its source, gushing through turbulent confluences, squelching across salt marshes to its estuary
slow erosions, shaping the land
the meniscus of a water drop
mist rising off the morning river
lulling
hypnotic
cascading
thundering
stickiness of water, clinginess of water molecules for each other, gluing the world
watersheds
aquifers
underground waters
hydrous rocks called serpentine deep in the Earth’s mantle
dramatic redistributions of the planet’s water
water inequalities
water conflicts
water migrations
retreating from the waters
rivers were the old main roads
our bodies and our environments are engineered by water
1 in 2000 people have webbed toes or fingers – syndactyly
the green tranquility of being on and in the river
dreaming of going elsewhere
immersed discoveries: eureka!
the stream of consciousness without breach, crack or division
the glee of the summer river
the threat of the fast brown water in spate, loaded with debris
the flooding river running down streets, swamping gardens, inventing new lakes for swans and waders
gongoozling = watching life go by on the river
the delighted yelp of throwing yourself in the river
go with the flow
freshwater, brackish water, saltwater, salt tears, salt lips
washed and unwritten by water
A single landscape is formed of dozens of other landscapes. The biotic landscape exists in which all the physical elements coincide, and to this is added the social landscape, the economic, the historic, the emotional… In her work, FORD, its maker allows us to take a poetic walk through all these places that dance and flow around the Water of Farrera, using this time to reflect on this ever more scarce and strategic resource.
“FORD was a text work in Catalan and English at the ford of the Barranc de Farrera, where the stream crosses the footpath and human meets water. The texts expressed the many facets of water: its movements, its transformations, its history, its poetic and emotional associations and aspects of water politics and climate change.”
Tracy Warr
4// To play in order to grow and be happy
Mécanisme pour Anna, Machine pour caresser les arbres
“This machine was conceived by looking at the dancer Anna Rubio performing beside a tree in Latvia. With her evocative movements while she was hugging trees, I had the idea of creating a machine placed in the forest which everyone could use to caress trees too. The machine was made with natural wood and without using industrial tools.”
Joanès Simon Perret
Le bruit de la foret
“This machine was inspired by a long forest walk in the Pyrenees, where I could hear only the sound of the wind passing through the trees and their leaves.”
Joanès Simon Perret
Pousse Salade
“This machine was created thanks to the Centre d’Art i Natura’s chef, who used to work with wild plants and local herbs. The chef told me that he had the idea of making machines for his garden: one for aubergines, one for salad, another one for tomatoes,… While he was explaining it with his hands, the gestures he made when he was just talking about the one for salad were so hilarious, that a clear idea of how it would look like came to my mind.”
Joanès Simon Perret
Printemps
“This last machine was made with two local dry flowers going up and down. It express the rhythms of the seasons, more specifically between the end of winter and the beginning of springtime.”
Joanès Simon Perret
Moments of crisis or profound changes assume important periods of reflection that we often take very seriously. Introducing playful elements
becomes an instrument of transformation that allows us to come closer to reality with a fresher, open and innocent gaze. Joanès Simon-Perret’s machines – many of them inspired by people – transform the mechanical, repetitive and practical movements of industrial machines into poetic actions like hugging trees or recreating the sounds of nature.
Nabb & Teeri start from the natural form of the cupules of the fruits of the holm oak (acorns). Playing with combinations, they link them up like molecular structures but also like three-dimensional labyrinths in the style of Escher’s staircases. Thanks to technological tools like 3D, the makers create tangible imaginary scenarios which invite us to lose ourselves in a macrocosmos sprung from this tiny element of the landscape.
“The litter found lying under holm oaks (Quercus ilex) growing next to the medieval pathways between Farrera and Tírvia has been used to built tiny models. By interlocking the holm oak cupules one within each other, very fragile, scale-like structures have been formed. We have 3D scanned and cloned multiple times one such sculptural fragment. In the resulting molecular video the combinations of the cupules model fantastic biopolymer chains, which are shown as slowly unwrapping, rotating space structures”
Nabb & Teeri
5// To listen to the spirit of the place
In this work, the choreographer, Anna Rubio, wants to heighten the role of the hermitages of the Natural Park of the High Pyrenees by listening to each place. Based on the Amerta Movement technique, Rubio claims to establish a dialogue with other places said to carry energy and possess spirit of place, which she interprets and relays to the audience. They too become a participant with whom she not only wants to share knowledge, but also participate in the history and the resonance which hides behind these centuries-old spaces of encounter and spirituality.
“Walking through these places, smelling and listening to their corners, I can only feel silently moved. I dance there, finding ground that shifts but welcomes, a wind that buffets but keeps you company, some tumbled stones that speak to me of many histories, even my own.”
“The Hermitage of St Quirc speaks to me of sound and movement.
That of Biuse speaks to me of the value of water as a fountain of life.
That of St Bartomeu speaks to me of the permeability between the inner and the outer; the I and the we; the I and the environment; the hermitage and the natural world.
That of St Magdalena speaks to me of the river, of going against the flow, of the strong woman St Magdalena was, of the tree trunks that now are dead nature.”
“That of St Maria de la Serra speaks to me of upheaval, of sadness, of the oval shape that earth and sky make, and of returning at last to the earth.
That of La Mare de Déu del Roser speaks to me of tradition and of fire.
That of Biuse speaks to me of human beings, sadness, wars and the dead. And in all of these things in these precise surroundings, Beauty.”
Anna Rubio
Piece of video-art, created in collaboration with Quelic Berga, created and inspired by the Chapel of St Maria de la Serra de Farrera.
Places have their own spirit, a spirit that comes from the sum total of all the layers that have accumulated: natural elements, social factors, vivid experiences, history…Nabb & Teeri reflect on the manifestation of this spirit of place in the cultural domain. Like explorers they investigate the cultural remains they find in various corners of Farrera, observing and minutely copying pages from books, local designs of labels, magazines and a whole host of images peculiar to the territory.
“The series Scale 1:1 consists of hand-drawn replicas of found local imagery. The drawings are made on travel documents and other pieces of paper that we brought with us during 4000km travelling to the residency by ferries, trains and buses. The smaller drawings are presented under water as seen in a dream before the installation. The work includes: two hand-copied topographic maps of Farrera and the surrounding area, in which hand-written local nomenclature also exist; a schematic diagram of Pallars Sobirà hydrology; a selection of vignettes in which trees and other plant parts are raw material for a variety of human purposes (from Trees of Ireland, a book from the Farrera library); as well as other pictures that we discovered from journals and magazines in the residence house, Casa Ramon”.
Nabb & Teeri
Local water
Tuula Narhinen
As a whole, the series called LOCAL revolves around the systematic cataloguing of elements that shape the place, in order to compare them later, see the differences, and finally to detect the essence of each place. It is only through this painstaking glance at natural elements, and in this work, at the flow of water-courses, that we may understand what makes them unique. In this instance, Närhinen carries out a tracking from their sources at springs to the deep rivers in the valley of Farrera, searching for the spirit of the place.
“Following the course of a creek called Barranc dels Clots (“The Creek of the Hollows”) I filmed a piece of stone that I dipped under the running water in several different locations. The work consists of short videos with the sound of flowing water accompanied by instances of stop motion animations and still photos that capture the fleeting reflections of sunlight on the water”.
Tuula Närhinen
To live in the here and now
To live in the present, the here and now is an essential part of the change to a more sustainable way of life. To breathe the present, inhale to future and exhale the past, is made very difficult within such an urbanised and supertechnified society as ours. We detach ourselves very quickly from the present moment, constantly projecting ourselves into the past or the future. Sun Happening, however, not only takes us back to a very concrete and present instant – the now – that in which the Sun is reflected in the mirrors placed on the crest line of the valley, but also sends us to a very concrete place – the here – from which we may enjoy light that is unique and spontaneous.
“This project was presented at the SAÓ Festival in 2015, in Farrera. Forty mirrors were arranged on the crest line of a mountain and were precisely focused at the same point just the day before the happening. The mirrors reflected the sun towards the same point on a trail. When going on this trail at the precise time of 12:52h, 60 people and I were passing by the “focus mirror point”, when we all had the feeling that the whole mountain was shining for us for five minutes. We could see the opposite mountain glittering so much that it became dazzling. My purpose with this installation was to show that mountain from another angle and to light up that place which is normally hidden in shadow. The installation worked for only one day, because of the angle of the sun changing and the mirrors being unable to converge any more”.
Joanès Simon Perret
“The patterns of earth movements seem to me like dances, physical-chemical choreographies, which appear quite light despite their inconceivable dimensions, and which I would like to trace in drawing.
The earth, its rock seems to me like a dough that forms in movement, and is formed by movements, dancing, a dancing dough with its own temporal beat and rhythm in the varying climatic conditions in each case.”Kati Gausmann
“The movements may be slow, quick, continual, jerky, soft, rough…
I follow the lithified movements of the mountains with my eyes while drawing them at the same time without looking on the drawing.
I name these blind rhythm drawings ‘dancing dough‘”
Kati Gausmann
For Kati Gausmann, mountains are like photographs which attempt to fix patterns of movement that are imperceptible to our eyes. But in reality, mountains have their own time and movement, very different from ours. They have their own particular here and now in which we share only the place. In this sense, Kati centres herself in the present moment, in the now of the mountain dance, following the sinuous shapes of the mountains which seem to pulse.
7// To cultivate a universal awareness
To recuperate the spiritual dimension of human beings, putting the natural world, the cosmos, at the centre, is essential in order to move towards a universal awareness. To achieve this we need to maintain a dialogue with the natural world from a place of love and respect, from the acceptance of being part of it. The dancer, Anna Rubio, works with symbols of highly specific places in the natural world, understanding that these are also universal symbols or reflections that apply to the entire planet. In this piece called Chiaroscuro, she explores the human anxieties and desires for illumination with the wish to search out the symbolism and messages that nature tends to hide, through a dialogue with the body.
“What are these threads that trap me in this false nest? What is this fragile tree that struggles to find the light but I myself? These hidden fears, these boundaries…I am my own captive. I search and I fall again time after time. How to free myself from it?… I want to find lightness, I want to fill this darkness of mine with light. I shall come out of the wood and come to the meadow. Once there, I shall approach the chapel and from the chapel come to the light. Lighter and lighter each time.”
Anna Rubio
Video art created in collaboration with Quelic Berga. Choreographed and performed by Anna Rubio to music composed and played by the Danish violinist, Christian Risgaard. Selected by the Picurt Festival (2015) and the Mostremp Festival (2016).
God is a meditation on our contemporary Gods. Quelic Berga establishes a parallel between the qualities of the (in this case Christian) God and compares them with the qualities of the search-engine, Google, the one that records all the events of our life, that is always ready to give an answer to our doubts, the one that knows and sees everything. Expressions such as “Saint Google” or “if you’re not on Google you don’t exist”, only reinforce this idea. Is the God of the XXI century a holy and spiritual understanding of human nature or an omnipresent awareness on the internet?
“How do we manage our identity, collective memory and our humble intimacy? Who knows it all? Who sees everything? Who decides which are sins and which are virtues? In whom should we have faith? Why do we have to behave well? This series of questions is today managed by new bodies. A new religion has been born.“
“A religion made of bits and electrons, of telecommunication-masts on the altars of cities, with little rosaries of interactive buttons that we keep in our pockets, with advice and prayers codified by algorithms, that guides us in a fantastic dream; the mystical experience that manages to absorb criticism and common sense by means of icons, and turn them into anecdotes in its pantheon.“
“We play at being critics using its tools, we delight in the illusion of freedom and many, many gigabytes. Welcome, then, to sweet increased reality, enhanced and quantified.”
Quelic Berga
8// To come closer to new paradigms
To reflect on the relationship we continue to have, both individually and collectively, with our environment presupposes not just a change of habits, but a paradigm shift. We have to change the way in which we understand what our place is, who we are, and to be aware of what the essence of life is, in order to be able truly and effectively to transform our society. This new paradigm also presupposes a modification of the way we go about explaining ourselves, and that also includes new ways of representing time, as Quelic Berga shows.
“In KC-Grad and CAN Farrera I developed Spirals Within Spirals.
This video explains the concept. I investigated how data visualisation could give different approaches if we understand time as a fractal instead of time as a lineal dimension.”Quelic Berga
Interviews with the artists
English translation: Anna Crowe.
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