A meteorite excavated from the ground and an unearthed karst cave are two distinct artistic case studies in which Anna Siekierska and Mikolaj Szpaczyński undertake a particular genre of field research. Their projects are united by a non-human temporal and spatial scale, links to mineral materiality, and a sensitivity towards multidimensional environmental relations. Both projects are transdisciplinary because they require both technical and scientific, as well as artistic competences. What is more, the artists offer the viewer an encounter with knowledge arising from personal experience rather than just expert knowledge. In this way, they reveal a longing for intimate engagement with the material aspects of the pre-human and extraterrestrial world.
Anna Siekierska’s installation, which is centred on the Morasko meteorite, comprises a particular kind of map of its arrival and presence on Earth, wooden objects that are inspired by the shape of the disintegrated meteorite, and photographs of its fragments taken not at the site of the fall, but in the human environment. The Morasko meteorite came from far away, i.e., the asteroid belt located between Mars and Jupiter. Even coming to realize this spatial scale is transformative and decentring for human subjectivity.
Siekierska discovers not the meteorite itself, but rather its scattered presence in new environments created by universities, museums, and private collectors. The map on display, meanwhile, is a reminder that Morasko, the largest meteor shower in Europe, fell to Earth some five thousand years ago, leading to the formation of craters that can now be seen in a natural reserve near Poznań. Although Morasko is an iron meteorite, it also contains small amounts of other substances, among them troilite, schreibersite, tellurium, and kosmochlorite, which are not found on Earth, as well as minerals only detected in Morasko, namely moraskoite and chochralskiite. The artist thus points to the commonalities of organic matter not merely in the sense of planetary and cosmic recycling, but also as an avenue for new, if short-lived, alliances between our species and the non-human world.
Mikoaj Szpaczyski’s project documents a multi-year process of excavating and mapping a cave which, as a result of natural phenomena in geologically distant times, became filled with clay. At the exhibition, this process is presented in two videos, eight maps of the cave which becomes deeper and deeper as it is extracted with a chisel, and a collection of cave objects presented in a display case. The unearthed world is “our” planet ahead of the presence of humans – in itself, this very thought exposes human arrogance toward other biological species and earthly resources.
The artist’s gestures are based on a continuous negotiation of his own bodily presence alongside rocks, clay, water, but also arachnids, night butterflies, bats, fungi, microbes, and many other active participants of cave life. Thus, Szpaczyński works WITH, rather than merely IN the cave. His body, entering this viscous materiality, experiences the presence of clay in his lungs, nose, and ears. In turn, this tangible physical contact inspires powerful emotions, fuels curiosity, and prompts the artist to obsessively return to the cave, undertake further nocturnal visits, and harbour a constant desire for further discovery. The artist travels into the unknown, that is, into the depths of a karst cave formed in the Muschelkalk of the Triassic sea. Entering the cave facilitates material contact with long-extinct life forms. The tangible memory of that past life takes the lithic form, while almost everything else disappears into the abyss of deep time.
At a time of environmental catastrophe and uncertainty, it is imperative that we move beyond biocentrism and become more attentive to the mineral dimensions of the environment . The multispecies alliances with mineral matter include into geological processes and only now, so very clearly, make us aware of our own mineral-biological collective becoming.
Monika Bakke
visual material: Mikołaj Szpaczyński, untitled, 2021
