clay bodies, displaced soils
Hamburgo, Alemania | 2025
En colaboración con Dshamila Bücker. Hallo: Festspiele 2025, PARKS.
Fotos por Ali Haji.
Bajo el concreto de PARKS yacen huellas de un humedal, borradas hace mucho por la industria y la guerra, y cerradas para siempre al tacto. Clay Bodies, Displaced Soils se pregunta qué significa estar alejados de esa tierra y cómo podríamos volver a vincularnos con ella.
Sin poder acceder al suelo que pisábamos, acudimos a la arcilla comercial: un material moldeado por la extracción industrial y el comercio global, traído de otros lugares y hecho para servir en cualquier parte, sin memoria de dónde vino.
L+s participantes moldearon baldosas de arcilla con su propio cuerpo —piernas, caderas, hombros, espaldas— inspirándose en la técnica ‘Mönche und Nonne’ (monje y monja) de tejas moldeadas en el muslo, que solía practicarse en Hamburgo. Ya cocidas y esmaltadas, estas piezas se instalarán en PARKS, formando una superficie de gestos compartidos.
Hamburg, Germany | 2025
In collaboration with Dshamila Bücker. Hallo: Festspiele 2025, PARKS.
Photos by Ali Haji.
Beneath the concrete of PARKS lay traces of marshland, long overwritten by industry and war, and sealed away from touch. Clay Bodies, Displaced Soils asked what it meant to be estranged from that land, and how we might still shape a connection.
Unable to access the ground we stood on, we turned to commercial clay: a material shaped by industrial extraction and global circulation, taken from elsewhere and made to serve any place, bearing no memory of where it had come from.
Participants shaped clay tiles using their own bodies – legs, hips, shoulders, backs – drawing from the ‘Mönche und Nonne’ (monk and nun) technique of thigh-moulded tiles once common in Hamburg. Fired and glazed, these pieces will be installed on-site in PARKS as a surface of shared gestures.
Photos by Ali Haji.
Beneath the concrete of PARKS lay traces of marshland, long overwritten by industry and war, and sealed away from touch. Clay Bodies, Displaced Soils asked what it meant to be estranged from that land, and how we might still shape a connection.
Unable to access the ground we stood on, we turned to commercial clay: a material shaped by industrial extraction and global circulation, taken from elsewhere and made to serve any place, bearing no memory of where it had come from.
Participants shaped clay tiles using their own bodies – legs, hips, shoulders, backs – drawing from the ‘Mönche und Nonne’ (monk and nun) technique of thigh-moulded tiles once common in Hamburg. Fired and glazed, these pieces will be installed on-site in PARKS as a surface of shared gestures.