Stalagnate

2021

Stalagnate was commissioned for the Stoa169. Located near the village of Polling, on the banks of the river Ammer, in the middle of Pfaffenwinkel, an open columned hall is being built: the STOA169. Artists from all continents were selected to design one column each, which together, as an archive of today's art, would carry the common roof of the STOA169

“As we find ourselves well into the Anthropocene, the name given to our current geological age and described as the period during which human activity is the dominant influence on climate and the environment, new inquiries have emerged in our understanding of what is natural. Where do ecosystems start and stop? How do we relate to the environment?

The idea for ‘Stalagnate’ came about in imagining an alternate relationship between the built environment and nature, where environmental phenomena and the fabricated converge in an unexpected way. Typically, the two exist in a constant struggle – the built keeping the elements at bay, the wild always knocking to reclaim its space. ‘Stalagnate’ imagines a different condition, one that envisages the spaces created by our concrete and metal environments analogous to natural caves and caverns. In a similar fashion, it submits to natural entropies, displaying a future state where the various minerals in the concrete have leached out, growing stalactites and stalagmites drop by drop in the building until eventually fusing into a stalagnate, a connected pillar formed where a stalactite and stalagmite meet. The work explores a condition in which both nature and edifice exist simultaneously without sacrificing one for the other. In spite of being exposed to the elements, the building stands supported by this ‘naturally’ formed pillar, a consequence of this exposure – and perhaps the reason the building has not fallen down.