Christina Birrer

Recently, I have placed lumen, inkotype, and collage photographic emulsions of natural phenomena directly in the path of the seasonal snow melt. The images are documented over time with their accretions and changes. 

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Both the changing landscape and the images are part of this observation, the performative aspect directly located in nature herself. The unseen, diurnal changes which have their own rhythm, create new compositions, not only changing the chemistry of the photosensitive substrates, but also by accretion and abrasion: each piece is reconnected to the earth from which it was created. 

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This includes offering these pieces up to pure fate, and of the primeval: one comes back to a large site where the objects placed upon a canvas are eerily lying ‘in place’- even a small tuft of grass is still there and completely dry- it  is  as if a magician whipped the tablecloth out from under the place setting…A desert wind doing this with large branches and stones and a tuft of grass.

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As one walks, tracing and retracing one’s steps to visit site installations, the instructions regarding walking meditation echo gently, then begin to gather new meaning as each step becomes more deeply incised; soon there will be a disturbance that will catch rain droplets, then create a new rivulet, which becomes a gash deepening with time.The meditation becomes one of placing one’s foot  where no trace   is  left- or  as  little as possible…one becomes an irish leprechaun, a yogini queen, as one now goes from rock to rock, carefully shifting one’s weight and footsteps leaving the earthen surfaces undisturbed. These liminal and invisible gestures are  performative as Allora & Calzadilla’s in “Land Mark”- where footprints are recorded as a transgressive and radical statement regarding social transformation: Now it is individual action melded with the planetary and the evolutionary- literally part of the sedimentary process.