Smell of Soil is an intermedia installation, in which I interpret a poem by Maria Kozaczkowa under the same title.
This work has emerged from the need of recognizing viewers relation to the matter of soil as a medium of symbolic and substantial values – within the exhibition-project “Machine for disappearing” in Cellar Gallery in Kraków.
- Place and work
Little nook and a little path leading to it – spaces in which I have installed my work – within the exhibition underground of Cellar Gallery, which has been respectively processed by me. Digging in a solid soil I softened it and deprived of its brick properties. From extracted bricks and stones I laid the pavement which led to the nook, whithin which took place projection.
Looped video image was projected onto plowed soil of the nook, presenting a tree – seen from the frog’s perspective, and me – climbing it up (projection gave the impression of rumble into the interior of the ground) and going back down (returning to the level of the audience).
- Poem
Emilia Michalska (06.07.1906r.) Pruchana nearby Cieszyn (Poland)
Smell of Soil
Soil has an eternal smell,
mysterious as nonentity,
intangible as a shadow,
faithful,
reliable.
Will not abandon nobody
and will not betray!
In a tiny bit,
in infinite massif
and in four boards,
below the ground
deep
smells like something,
that passed in joy
or in suffering:
soil smells of human!
- Video
Machine for disappearing – poster: Michał Hyjek.