about /

dining table, and conversations (1) is a two-part spatiotemporal installation that addresses mundane amidst rapidly changing situations. Observing locally collected dirt with chopsticks, receivers examine infra-ordinary environments around them and excavates traces from within. Trajectories of their searching movements are then archived on a screen as ghosts of our presence. 

Using chopsticks, visitors are prompted to search in a heap of dirt collected from everyday landscapes close to the exhibition site. As they forage through the heap, contact mics in the dirt trace their movements and project live sound that decays as echoes. 

Receivers are encouraged to stay as long (or as short) as they would like. When they are done, they leave foraged traces on the table together with collections from previous visitors. Outside, a screen capturing past trajectories is hung on the wall.  

Where does the “environment” start, and where does it end? When does something become a human trace? Are these “non-natural substances”? What happens if these traces disintegrate to a point of non-recognition by human eyes? I instigate these questions through direct participation by the visitors, by engaging in  repetitive, mundane movements mimicking dining gestures. These movements, paired with echoes from contact mics, are perhaps banal, maybe industrious, satisfying to some, meditative to others, and anxious to most. Nonetheless, they are devised as possible “palate cleansers," for a chance of a presence.