For “Tectonic Tender,” Nina Canell’s latest exhibition on the Berlinische Galerie, the Swedish artist unfold seven tons of seashells throughout the gallery ground. Then, she invited guests to stroll throughout them, crushing and crunching shells beneath their toes as they meandered. After their stroll, they encountered Power Funds (2017–18), a 16-minute video Canell made together with her Swedish collabtakorator Robin Watkins. It confirmed shell-less mollusks—leopard slugs—dragging themselves throughout electrical switchboards intercut with putting scenes of colossal concrete towers. Taken collectively, these components gesture towards calcite. The development business usually sources the mineral, which is important to creating trendy concrete, from limestone deposits that comprise the shells of marine mollusks. To debate this shocking provide chain, Canell met with anthropologist Sophia Roosth on Zoom. An professional within the life sciences, Roosth is at work on a ebook about geobiology, a self-discipline that appears at how biotic and geologic programs have an effect on each other. Roosth is an affiliate professor at New York College and the creator of Artificial: How Life Obtained Made (2017). Her analysis usually asks the query: what’s life? Beneath, the 2 focus on the method behind and implications of biomineralization—the methods dwelling organisms kind and accumulate minerals.
NINA CANELL I titled the present “Tectonic Tender” after coming throughout the intriguing etymology of the phrase “tectonic.” I discovered “carpenter” and “builder” in its Latin and Greek origins [tectonicus and tektonikós, respectively]. I housed the shells in a form of sound chamber, so you could possibly actually hear them breaking beneath your toes. I used to be fairly stunned by the crunchiness of the fabric; it’s not a cushty expertise.
SOPHIA ROOSTH The place do you suppose the discomfort comes from?
CANELL From the sensation of breaking one thing. You may sense that it’s a kind that’s been compromised.
ROOSTH Attention-grabbing; I discover it to be a really satisfying crunch.
CANELL The sound is one in all a small explosion, which does remind me of bubble wrap, so I suppose it may be each. Within the gallery—this extremely synthetic, starkly lit atmosphere—I wished to deliver forth the shells’ relation to the development business, and present that strolling throughout this materials will not be so totally different from a traditional stroll throughout the gallery’s polished concrete ground, which was simply beneath. I wished to ask viewers to have a extra tactile connection to the fabric.
ROOSTH Listening to the sound of strolling on shells—on calcite—I used to be reminded of on a regular basis I’ve spent interviewing geologists for the ebook I’m writing. They’re learning outcrops, so inevitably, all my area recordings have crunches that interrupt the circulation of our conversations.
The acoustic chamber definitely amplifies that sound in a man-made method; the crunching sounds totally different than it might open air. Within the brochure accompanying the exhibition, you say that the seven tons of shells “communicate up from the bottom.” So it’s not only a crunch, but in addition a voice, proper? The shells are saying one thing together with the one that’s collaborating in your exhibition, and who breaks them down.
The anthropologist Stefan Helmreich wrote an essay referred to as “Seashell Sound” [2012]. He talks concerning the historical past of the metaphor of seashells as mouths that talk, tracing the looks of shells in poems, together with one by William Wordsworth, but in addition the methods seashells determine as ears. After all, you possibly can
put the shell to your ear and listen to the sound of the ocean. You may hear what the ocean is telling you, as a result of the ear and the shell are each spirals—“cochlea” is Latin for snail. If these shells are, as you set it, “talking up from the bottom,” what’s it that you simply hear them saying?
CANELL I really like how shells evoke this elision between making, producing, and listening to sound that you simply describe. They communicate of strain and transformation, emitting the sound of a damaged dried-out voice. I’m additionally within the concept of talking up from the bottom. I usually consider sculpture as one thing that’s, in a way, certain to the floor, and about talking from beneath as a selected place. Muddling the indoor and the outside encourages totally different modes of interacting with the bottom; bipedalism is just one technique to journey. I wished to ask viewers to mirror on the actual fact that there’s a form of vitality there within the floor, and that loads of constructing processes are tied up with the act of breaking.
ROOSTH What you stated about bipedalism makes me consider topographic data, and the distinction between house and place. House is an abstraction; place is one thing that’s lived in and skilled. [Anthropologist] Tim Ingold has written about motion as a form of data. He says that, for inhabitants of a spot, issues don’t exist—they happen. To me, it feels that you simply’re after one thing related—the piece is much less concerning the intrinsic high quality of the shells themselves than about their containing knots of tales that many individuals are most likely not attuned to. In that form of dilatory geological time, all kinds of various tales intercalate.
CANELL Completely. For me, sculpture is an encounter; it’s atmospheric and materials on the similar time. I used to be undoubtedly serious about what you name “knots of tales,” and the lengthy and complex strategy of biomineralization. Every shell is exclusive, but while you encounter them within the type of constructing materials, it comes out of huge generic sacks. Lots of our encounters with nature come via extraction. By displaying the shells in such bulk, I wished to evoke a way of brutality that contradicts the intricate nature of every shell’s kind.
ROOSTH Do you imply brutality within the sense that every one these supplies have been extracted from their marine atmosphere? Or are you pondering of the Anthropocene and power consumption?
CANELL Each. The entire course of is brutal. Shells are dredged up from the seafloor. I realized concerning the dredging course of whereas seeking to purchase pebbles via a provider. Then, I came upon that you could possibly additionally purchase shells by the ton for hardscaping functions. I used to be actually shocked, as a result of I hadn’t identified that mollusk shells had been one thing that you could possibly purchase at that scale. I discovered it utterly weird. However after reflecting a bit, I began pondering, what’s the distinction between shells and cement, anyway? My curiosity grew over time I spent within the sedimentary reefs of Gotland, a area of Sweden all the time in battle with the cement business.
ROOSTH You make these connections between business and geology actually express. This opens up different methods of serious about the connection between course of and materials and time. Architectural historian Lucia Allais has been writing about what she calls the “carbonation equation.” Mainly, it’s the concept that strengthened concrete has a “lifespan” of a few hundred years, so we’re nearing a second through which plenty of strengthened concrete will begin to turn out to be out of date. She makes the purpose that concrete mixes up totally different sorts of periodization—there’s the geological timescale in addition to the day-to-day lifetime of development and structure. So there are a number of methods you possibly can ask how lengthy it would take for concrete to decay—there’s the deep time through which the shells and numerous substances that kind concrete come collectively. There’s additionally the favored expectation that concrete will final eternally. After which there are all of the methods through which concrete is accountable for anthropogenic local weather change and different types of degradation.
CANELL I used to be actually shocked to study concerning the life span of concrete buildings, particularly since we’ve got Roman structure that’s nonetheless standing. Apparently Roman concrete is extra sturdy as a result of they used volcanic ash and seawater. I’m undoubtedly involved in contrasting these timescales; equally, in your essay “Mineral Autobiography” [in the catalogue for the 2019 Milan Triennial], you write about resisting linear time, and about conditions that have interaction a number of temporalities. You utilize the expression “elsewhen” in your textual content—I’m smitten with this phrase! You describe how sure rock formations complicate our understanding of continuity and linearity. I expertise this with rocks too, newbie that I’m. The vitality of the fabric evokes a multiplicity of durations.
ROOSTH There’s one thing about rocks that lets us all be amateurs, in a way. My son, who’s 5, has a ebook referred to as Previous Rock (will not be boring) [2020], through which a rock tells tales about its lengthy life. Generally, I fantasize that this may be the title of my ebook! Within the humanities, we regularly take into consideration time in a reasonably restricted method. I first observed this in discussions of the Anthropocene. As I talked to earth scientists, geologists, geobiologists, and micropaleontologists, I observed that they continually take into consideration totally different timescales. I began to marvel why these scales appear so unthinkable or irrelevant to so many people when there are many individuals who take into consideration them on a regular basis. I saved coming again to that phrase you simply used: vitality. Why is it that issues that don’t transfer, or that transfer actually slowly, are imagined to be inanimate, whereas issues that do transfer are imagined to be animate? Motion is that this criterion by which we determine whether or not one thing is significant or not, however some issues transfer on totally different timescales. You’re ascribing vitality to those shells, and to different issues which might be throughout us, like concrete.
CANELL I’ve labored with this query in numerous contexts. My exhibition 2017 exhibition “Viscosity” and associated works actually lean into that drawback. It centered round mastic gum. [Mastic, a non-Newtonian fluid, is a resin taken from trees], and I displayed the fabric on metal helps. You actually can’t see that it strikes until you cling round for every week or two. The [high viscosity] gum strikes very quick when in comparison with rocks. I usually prefer to inhabit this hole between realizing and seeing, and encourage viewers to know materiality as one thing porous and deep.
Your essay attracts consideration to sedimentation, a form of gradual accumulation. Sedimentation additionally got here up lately once I was chatting with performer and dancer Maria Hassabi. I did a challenge together with her [at Officine Grandi Riparazioni in Turin this past February], and she or he has these methods of transferring extremely slowly; it takes great talent to remain in a single place for very lengthy. She talked about that, in between these positions, she would expertise twitches or muscular spasms. This too made me take into consideration micro actions and micro vibrations inside period, and about vitality at totally different scales.
ROOSTH She’s approaching vegetal time! In my work, I usually ask, what are the politics of increasing our notion of vitality? Actions like New Materialism have been attacked from quite a lot of sides in academia, and this has been a giant challenge in my work. I feel lots about one thing Mel Y. Chen stated of their ebook Animacies[2021]. They argue which you could take into consideration vitality as a spectrum, and that the division between life and nonlife is perpetually being policed in ways in which ascribe sure sorts of beings extra vitality, whereas others are ascribed much less. Chen pays consideration to issues like gender, class, race, and particularly incapacity. As I attempt to write about full of life rocks, I really feel haunted by the likelihood that New Materialism and its efforts to ascribe liveliness to nonliving issues can brush in opposition to problematic politics. I’m nonetheless grappling with this.
CANELL That’s a really critical query to think about. I used to be serious about Kathryn Yusoff’s ebook A Billion Black Anthropocenes or None [2018], which was essential for bringing consideration to how our bodies intermingle with toxins. With regards to cement, we should talk about mining limestone and bear in mind what sorts of our bodies are uncovered to these toxins.
ROOSTH That time about miner’s lung jogs my memory that nothing is pure and unpolluted; we’ve got to acknowledge that we’ve all the time been a part of this degraded atmosphere, and that chemical compounds are our kin as a lot as every little thing else. So perhaps the query will not be about life versus nonlife, however what Michelle Murphy calls “alterlife.”
—Moderated by Emily Watlington