At the end of the nineteenth century, it was discovered that the waters of Wildbad, in Rothenburg ob der Tauber, Germany, possessed healing properties. Subsequently, Friedrich Hessing, considered one of the inventors of prosthetic technology for amputated limbs, oversaw the building of a castle, which would house a spa for health treatments. With the gradual drying up of the thermal springs in the area, the building and the park have been used for several different purposes, and today artists are invited to create permanent works for the site.
The [...] Element, by Laura Belém, occupies a space chosen by the artist under the structure of the building, the architecture of which appears to mimic geology, referring back to a cave, cavern or other shelter amidst rocks. The marks of the design and construction, however, are evident: the arch of perpendicular bricks, which also resemble a portal, the windows symmetrical to the staircase outside, the wall in linear form, even if made up of irregular shapes.
The audio of the installation, a circular quadraphony, derives from a soundscape on the banks of the Tauber River which surrounds the park, and was recorded by Belém during her Art Residency. Insect noises and the sounds of water – from the flowing river, mills and rain – and birdsong are mastered together with musical instruments, drums, guitars and whistles, in rhythms that change speed between contemplation and suspense. In the end, bodies seem to fall into the water, which follows its course.
This dramaturgy must be read together with the text The element, unmentioned by the Swiss-German poet Nora Gomringer, written especially for Belém’s work. Through mirrored verses in German and English, the poem is constructed from liquid verbs and images: wet, wash, dry, water, drip, drain; sweat, sip, drops, tears. Stories of humans and non-humans narrating with each other through water: kisses were wet, the river complained, the fish spoke, the night became wet, she watered the deer and the stream swelled. The latter, a central section that reflects and translates the poem into two languages, is the reverse image of the process of drying up.
Another central element of the work is a manual water pump the artist found by advertising in the city's newspaper. The object has been used for centuries in the region to bring water to the surface, through the gestures and mechanical force applied by humans, reversing the natural flow of gravity that keeps the water underground, making its domestic use possible. Even with modern technologies, many houses in rural Germany still feature these spouts which, in general, even though smaller and produced on an industrial scale today, imitate the old design, with floral themes and anthropomorphic references – in this case, the height of the object in the installation (2.00 m) is close to that of a body.
However, the determining element, which gives the work its title, is absent, disappeared, phantasmatic [...]. No adjective seems to fit. It is no and all words at the same time. The water here, and everything it incorporates – chemically, historically, its flows, its color, its brightness, its sound – is like the amputated part of a body. After some time without the organ, against the palpable reality, for the living and sensitive being that remains, the limb seems to be present. Art can extend the duration of this pain – or generate healing devices, like Hessing's prostheses. The […] Element places physical and invisible elements in equivalence, making material what only those who have lost could recognize.
Laura Belém seems to create this sound piece to tell all the stories that water can (or cannot) tell, shuffling the physiological and fictional nature of its presence in that space and in those lives. The artist places an objet trouvé in this gallery-cave, which is clean and bright throughout. Life, from water and in water, runs through these springs, which permitted and witnessed everything – when contemplated, one notices the rusty surface, the marks of the time spent in contact with the air and the water impregnated in the metal. Objects and architecture carry with them their ghosts, also present in the sounds and in the spoken text that appears camouflaged there. Narratives, like water, go, but things stay. Through them, and the gesture of exhibiting them with a certain prominence, reserve and even ritual, it is possible to make ourselves see, feel and witness. Everything there, the castle, the park, this work, you and me, only exist because of these waters and these stories.
Guilherme Giufrida
February 2020
