Ceramic pots underneath the surface retain moisture, only to be pulled into the surrounding soil when it becomes dry. The porous ceramic pot’s can become a fertile surface for moss to grow onto. Alongside other properties such as holding water as baths for birds, frogs, or absorbing soil microbiology into the porous ceramic sieve’s that can be transported from a fertile area to that in need of a wider variety of microbiology. As the project became an attempt to facilitate nature and it’s own recovery, it moved into a more complex way of looking at the role of human interventions using manmade materials in interaction in relation to the natural response of the surroundings.
/ Artificial earth
Broedplaats de IJsbrand – Amsterdam
04.2020 – currently
Clay, ceramics, plaster
Artificial earth is a project about the material transformation that occurs when raw clay is fired and turned into ceramics. This process irreversibly makes it part of a cultural heritage, and detaches it from the otherwise flexible properties of clay. This project was created in conversation with Debra, who is cultivating the garden attached to my atelier into a food-forrest. Working together with her I created objects for the garden, out of clay found in the garden. All the items we made from this clay are made to be used in the voedselbos, some for humans, others are non human centric. There are properties of ceramics in comparison to raw clay which enable the objects to fulfilling a role withint the local human en ecological systems.