Querying quarries – a site-specific investigation in time

Abstract

This essay is an attempt to research by writing and reflect on my artistic work on the topic of time. The essay navigates through different times - the times spent on site, the times of writing, the times of reading, the times of places, and the times of translating between thoughts and languages.2 Also language is a site. As I move between the village where my site-specific enquiry takes place and the art school as institution, I also travel in-between languages. Translation takes time. Time which is not necessarily linear: ”trans” means “across”. Language as material. Writer and researcher Daniela Cascella states: “This is where writing as re-search begins: not to explain with definitions and limits, but to amplify, echo, transmit.”3 Following Cascella, my essay tries to transmit and make knowledge through writing. The process of writing brings knowledge to my practical work. The essay consists of different layers of writing and times, fieldnotes, notes to the reader, and academic text. It is an active choice to use a fragmented methodology. Together the different fragments (layers) of the texts move between times in a nonlinear form. This is a way to show that different times influence each other. The writing time of this essay is spread across days between September – December 2023.