moving the landscape — lucía raba tortosa

MOVIENDO EL PAISAJE / MOVING THE LANDSCAPE

Impression n. 6: stone from Iceland at
the river Besaya (Cantabria).

Porcelain, 2014.

From my work “Moviendo el Paisaje” (Moving the Landscape), 2014:

“Porcelain impressions: the skin of the stone.

I collected several stones from the volcanic context of the Icelandic landscape, for its later transfer to the fluvial landscape of the Atlantic Cantabrian coast in Spain.
I then assigned each rock a different river, applied a porcelain impression, and permanently deposited the stones at new locations, where photography recorded the interventions.

Porcelain will be the layer that mediates between the two landscapes: the place of origin and destination.
In its liquid form, the porcelain adapts to the texture, cavities, and the rock’s irregular surface; its plasticity protecting the inside and becoming one with the stone. The rocks acquire a matte white mantle, hiding their true appearance, becoming seeds.

Through these porcelain impressions, the stones -natural elements- are transformed into artistic objects: when the impressions vanish, nature will turn the object-stones into stones again.

The porcelain is the memory, and it will gradually deteriorate at the contact with water, when the river carries away the rocks, or when the rain falls at the shore. This impression will leave a movement trail, a trace that will show where the rock has gone (...).

The earth is moving, everything is in constant motion, and therefore there is nothing that we can call unalterable, nothing that remains in the landscape infinitely.
Everything is in constant transit. Trees die and new ones grow, rivers flow and erode the land. Time also erodes, transforms, kills, and creates. It flows constant, like the rivers, slow but inexorably.

Human action industrialises nature, builds cities, and crushes mountains.
Walking, we drag small pebbles from the path and move them around constantly. The unspoiled landscape is non-existent, there is nothing that has always remained. We can't be sure of what makes a place a place, but the most durable thing we know of a landscape are stones.

My actions will be continued by nature, and this continuation of the work will not be documented or observed by anyone: the rivers will become the artists. The work itself is a starting point, open-ended, and it invites a reflection about the things that leave their place and then return, having been intervened to later be released again.

Photography becomes the only witness and the final work of this project, in which materiality is conspicuous by its absence.”

Impression n. 9: stone from Iceland at
the river Asón (Cantabria).

Porcelain, 2014.

Stone n. 3, before and after the impression has taken place.

The rising of the river tide made the porcelain leave a white trace on the water.
Contrast between the volcanic origin of the rock vs. the smooth, water-modelled stones that surround it.

EN LA ORILLA DEL FUEGO - EN LA ORILLA DEL AGUA
(ON THE EDGE OF FIRE - ON THE EDGE OF WATER)

River rock from my home at the crater of Mount Vesuvius in Italy.
2011

Rock from Mount Vesubius at a riverbank in Cantabria, Spain.
2011