Figuring Times
Figuring Times is an installation with found objects, human bones, and sound. The found objects were taken from the site where the Nya Lödöse archeological project was taking place. Most materials were objects that came from the construction project that was happening at the same time as the archaeological work. The sound piece is a text that works as a guide, a voice over; it accompanies the installation and tells us about the relationship between archeology, the future, and nature, in a poetic way.
Katxerê Medina started her research by doing on-site observation. After gaining an overview about the Nya Lödöse archaeological project, Katxerê focused on a recently closed excavation of an old graveyard. Witnessing the past that had been uncovered, and which had been “disappeared” almost without a trace, Katxerê came to question why the archeological project was taking place at that particular moment. On the surface of ground that had previously contained 700 skeletons, now there was a single blue electricity box. This sight impressed Katxerê, so she formulated it into a juxtaposition of energy and death, of future construction and the removal of the past; this became the theme of her research. After that Katxerê started walking around the site collecting traces of what had happened. Also, in order to contextualize her findings, Katxerê conducted a series of interviews with experts in the field of archeology and in other relevant disciplines.
The transformation of her research into an artwork was the trickiest part. Quite early in the process, Katxerê decided that she had material for at least two different works. She experimented with different ways of showing the found objects, at first with the intent of mimicking the archeological practice of collecting found things in plastic bags. However, within these bags an essential thing disappeared: the mixing of times, of layers. It was very difficult to see what objects were in each bag or to know why they had been collected. Katxerê decided to mix the objects together with human bones (taken from the Archeology Department at Gothenburg University) and to place them in wooden boxes. In this way, these pieces were exhibited as remnants from our own civilization, which now appeared in a strange light.
About the transformation of her interviews into a sound guide, Katxerê first thought of leaving the original material intact. This proved unsatisfactory, however, as these voices were so different that they did not sound good together. Katxerê, then, transformed them little by little, as a series of abstractions, until she arrived at a text in which these voices had been manipulated and combined into yet another voice in which they resided as ghost-like traces. Katxerê believes that this process reveals how she perceives the outcome of her work. She approached science and used scientific method, but she ended up with something else completely.
Sometimes art is able to answer particular questions better than science can do it. Also, art clears the way for new questions to be posed. Katxerê believes that there is something powerful in the way that art can operate both together with scientific disciplines as well as remaining free from them. Art can squeeze science, meddle with it, and make inquiry into it. The result is an interdisciplinary approach to art that makes it own image of science.
To hear a sound piece that Katxerê made as part of this installation, have listen to this:
For more information about Figuring Times, go to this link:
For more information about Katxerê Medina, then have a look here:
The text reproduced above was originally published in a slightly different form by Katxerê Medina in 2016 in Can You Dig It: What Happens When Ten Artists Engage with Archaeological Practices?, pp. 42-47. Gothenburg: Valand Academy: University of Gothenburg.
For more information about Can You Dig It?, check out that project’s site:
