edaphics
a soil-graphic experiment

photo by Frank Kleinbach
edaphics is an experiment in nature-writing. Inspired by the sensual temporality of the soil, it treats writing as a small piece of existence in its own immersion in the world. The process involves leaving papers exposed in different niches of the forest. By incorporating writing, eating, erasing, abrading, concealing, eroding, these papers enact the temporal and material process of immersive dialogue. A quest into the aesthetic echos of “compost writing”, this multispecific companionship is a mutual act of composition, querying the hierarchical division between human and other-than-human agencies.
An installation shown between June 1 and 24, 2022 in the exhibition "Hidden Traces" at the Akademie Schloss Solitude, edaphics results also in a series of poems (work in process). Inspired by Anne Carson’s translations of Sappho, the poems enact the synchronicity of agencies transforming these papers. The various possibilities of reading the texts, enabled by a game of multiple bracketing, compose layers of narratives that transmute and re-compost meaning.

