Clara Thesis Outline & Proposal"

Clay Heads

THESIS DRAFT

Introduction

The following collection of short stories is gathered from personal memories, observations and findings, mostly in relation to the video installation "Bodies of Water". The stories also include personal ones of falling in and out of love, of obsessions and childhood memories. A partially humoristic ode to being human in the anthropocene, mainly focussing around the topics of clay, water and music, which come together in the installation itself.

The installation "Bodies of Water" is a solarpunk vision of a reciprocal relationship between clay and humans.

A conversation with the matter which hosts at least 30% of us in houses of brick and cob, and which has been my growing obsession.

Aiming to visualize and unravel the complexity of clay mining and usage, I am creating ceramic instruments as a research medium.

On the one hand extracted, reshaped, burned, it is impossible to return clay into it’s natural form.

On the other hand clay quarries leave behind an abyss which is usually recultivated, fills with water, turns into lakes, turns into diverse habitats.

A calming thought experiment of nature returning no matter how much our species may take from it.

1. Two Solar Punks

We are standing close to the check-in of the boulder gym with its view onto a slightly depressing looking canal, on yet another gray, rainy day in this puddle of a town. Next to me stands one of my dearest friends, looking down on his phone, yet internally ready to scramble up and down walls for hours.

We both grew up in suburban Hamburg and decided to study in a small student overrun town in the Netherlands, 3 1/2 hours West from home. As a teenager I fantasized over him late at night, but eventually found out that my chances were low, as he wasn't romantically interested in humans with uteruses and breasts.

Asking my mother during that time of confusion, what she thinks his sexuality might be, she simply stated that if such a diamond of a human has not been in a relationship with a girl, that is a clear indicator. Oh, the simplicity of suburbia. But she was right after all, got to give her that.

Organically my attraction to him switched to a different kind of love, I would say even a stronger, more forgiving kind of love.

We are waiting for someone he has recently met here and will join us today. A blond man, well boy, whatever one is in their early twenties, enters. He is wearing a relatively snug fitting brown leather jacket with a fur collar. There is something slightly arrogant about him I think to myself. He smiles and my judgemental opinion changes immediately while I nervously drop my cards on the floor next to the counter. He helps me pick them up and we introduce ourselves.

He is a good hugger.

Odd to think back to that day, knowing that only another heartbreak and year of friendship later, these two will spend 3 years of their lives together.

I would say we made quite the cliche hippie-esque couple. Both long haired blondies, idealists, intensive travelers, opening and closing our relationship, vegetarian, and not to forget to finish off hippie cliches; white and from privileged households. Our lives together were contradictory in itself, preaching about sustainability, while flying to Cape Town to visit friends and the Burning Man Festival in the middle of the South African desert.

The solutions to almost all global issues seemed obvious to both of us; universal basic income, community housing, local produce…

He would be the one to switch between utopian excitement, in which a group of friends would buy a little piece of land and live in a community in the Italian mountains, build a cob house, grow microgreens and mushrooms, and a dystopian luring (climate) anxiety, confronted with the inescapable and destructive, patriarchal and capitalist structures which we grew up with.

I wonder if he will ever have that little farm, as over the years we both started to sense the exact craving for a stable life and income, which would be judged loudly over glasses of wine and beer throughout the years. What an odd, roller coaster of a decade the twenties are.

Stubborn as I am, I would not want to agree with his often exaggerated statements and facts to underline his argumentation on how this messed up world could be changed after all. But behind that reflex of stubborn disagreement, I did at core agree to his points.

We both aligned in the way we would like to imagine a future in which nature, humans and technology could coexist and interact.

We were and will be solarpunks at heart.

2. Red Brick House

She grew up in a suburbia shaped from red brick houses hosting 2 perfectly normed, nuclear family constellations at a time.

She moved into a red brick house hosting 250 humans challenging these norms.

She moved into a red brick house with two other artists, tedious mice, pigeons that would release themselves in her room when the door would be left open and moths nibbling on her woolen clothing.

She despises the color red more than anyone she ever met.

3. Clay head

Immersing my hands in the soft body of soil, I forget about the concept of time until my back painfully reminds me of the duration of my doing.

I intuitively stroke the material until the desired smoothness of the surface and shape is achieved. An extension of my own body and mind, each object recognisable as my hands’ collaboration with the organic matter.

I started working with clay during the last year of my undergraduate degree at an art academy in the north of the Netherlands. Making and failing plenty, my usually impatient self would be pinned to the ceramics studio for many hours at a time.

The small room almost hidden behind the cantine hadn't really caught my attention in the 3 years leading up to this point, possibly due to the dislike of the oddly unmotivated workshop instructor.

Not exactly sure what switched, but once I started I never stopped and became increasingly obsessed.

I went on to take a turntable course in Barcelona, impatiently waiting until I could go back to my class in Gràcia, a lively neighborhood towards the mountains. The class was led by the calm handed, attractive, tattooed teacher Antonio. It started by watching him in the almost sensual act of centering a 500 gram piece of clay, a slurping soundscape while continuously changing the shape from a phallic tower to a flat blob. Once I was able to center and pull up the walls of a vessel with his help, it was time to wait until the piece was, what is called, leather hard.

“Un poco más!” Would be one of his typical comments in the next step of the process; trimming. Tapping on the shape I was working on, he was listening to the sound of the hollow body. Once the sound became drum-like, hollow, it was time to stop cutting down and leave the little creation to dry and wait for its next step.

Baking, glazing, baking, and after 4 weeks in total I would finally hold my first own cups. Oh, the joy. Of course every piece but one would be gifted proudly to family members for Christmas a month later.

That last one, my favorite, was a cup accidentally twirled around by the spinning table. A beautifully accidental, asymmetrical mistake, reminding me of its organic origin and handmade qualities.

Glaze stuck to the kiln, 20 mouldy, non-waterproof cups, completely melted pieces that I accidentally put in the wrong temperature kiln and many more mistakes would follow. Many explainable, many frustrating, but hey, all full of lessons.

More cups, vases, plates, swords, crowns, and now instruments became part of my proud collection of ceramic creations. I arrogantly seam to hardly want to use a mass produced ceramic object with pleasure anymore, knowing the bliss I feel when holding one made with my, my friends or my sisters hands.

It's addictive I swear! The workshop appearing to lure me in, every time I pass it on the second floor of our university building.

A playground where knowledge exchange is the norm between all playmates, collectively understanding the medium in greater detail every time. Running into fellow enthusiasts I can usually expect a new geeky conversation on a new experiment being explained and shown to me with glowing, child-like excitement in their eyes.

It is rarely a self centred showing off, it is coming from that excited playfulness and the knowing that the other will feel the same and exchange volcanic rock powder, ashes, found clay and other toys back.

An odd combination of a feeling of productiveness, mixed with a meditative phenomenon and yet a feeling of procrastination, not knowing why I exactly keep creating artefacts that the world definitely is not in need of.

The more I read the more I understand the import and various role clay has played for humanity. 30-50% of us live in houses from clay, our species has been creating with it since 14.000 BC. Tableware, writing boards, instruments, sculptures, face masks or hey, how about a snack of clay?

4. Geophagia

At 10:36 on a Tuesday morning I get a text from my close friend Felix.

“Hi girl

Wanna be crazy and go to Kyrgyzstan with me?

Found flights for 70€”

"When?" "How?"

“In March.

Look up it’s far as fuck”

At 1:25pm the flights are booked. I guess this is happening.

We start researching what we actually just signed up for. The “Switzerland of Asia” seems to be a beautifully mountainous country, far from what we know, far in general. 5000km far with a time difference of 5 hours. Definitely the most random decision we have made in a while. I don’t think I have ever even talked to anyone from Kyrgyzstan.

One day later I get another text from Felix.

“Yooo

Dune wants to come!

Omg they booked”

Another day later:

“Lisa is coming!

Just booked the flights for her haha”

Another day passes and I find a new group chat in my chat history.

One more person, Paula, signed up for the unusual endeavor. I have never met her before. Curious. Very curious. About all of it.

I start looking for clay mines and extraction lakes, maybe I justify this trip to myself by using it for my master research?

I don’t want to know how many hours I have recently spent on Google Maps, searching for the white spots signaling a possible clay mine or the turquoise excavation lakes. I would confidently call it my new hobby at this point to be honest, and I don’t mind. Ever zoomed into the pacific between Alaska and Russia? Theres this small eerie island called Diomede. Look it up. Right now. Don’t even want to try to explain it to you. I also realized the overwhelming size of Greenland, especially in contrast to it’s 56.583 inhabitants. How do they come up with such concrete population numbers? Who are THEY?

I think of the flat in Berlin, Friedrichshain that I lived in back in 2021. Me and 2 friends, none of us ever registered, none of us allowed to put our name on the door, parcels permanently not being delivered right. Well these numbers are also just humanity trying to make sense of things I guess.

I think of one of my favorite quotes from The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupery.

“Grown-ups like numbers. When you tell them about a friend, they never ask questions about what really matters. They never ask: “What does his voice sound like?””

Well. No matter what I can’t find any clay mines, not even when searching in Russian or Kyrgyz. “Чопо карьери”. Nothing. “Глиняный карьер”. Nada.

Okok but now let me tell you what I DID find. Ever heard of geophagia? No? Me neither. It's a term describing the practice of eating soil, such as clay. Yeah, it’s a thing.

Okok. So it turns out to be a common practice that people in Kyrgyzstan eat clay. Yepp. Eat it. Chunks of it. Just like that. I find images of market stands in Bishkek with varieties of gray, yellow and blueish clay bits, ready to be munched. I find a website called museumofedible.earth where the blue clay is described as following:

“One of the most delicious clays. It has a beautiful light gray color with yellow streaks on the surface of the piece. The clay is dense and homogeneous in structure. It bites off with a crunch, breaks down into plates and melts into a delicate creamy mass, practically without sticking. At the very beginning, there is a subtle sweetish aftertaste. This clay has a very rich clay taste. Nourishing.”

“They eat clay.”

Felix repeats several times over bottles of wine at his place a few days later.

“They EAT clay!”

´

5. Lake days

Growing up in Hamburg's suburb Bergedorf, many summer days were spent and winter dips taken at its various lakes that were within cycling distance of my parents house.

I generally am one who enjoys immersing themselves in water in moments of flaring up anxiety. A dip into a body of water almost guarantees to rinse of the racing heart and annoyingly intrusive thoughts. Most chances I get I aim to motivate everyone around to leave clothing behind and sprint into waters encountered. One of the most freeing, bonding, calming, exciting things I can imagine is a swim in good company.  

In July of this year my sister and I went to the one closest to our childhood home to take photos of her as she was pregnant with her daughter Svea.

Watching and photographing my pregnant, naked sister, she started washing her belly with the water we were once bathed in as toddlers.

Then she started singing, not knowing that I was now actually recording her serenading her unborn child.

Half a year later I am revisiting this memory, with new information added to the context; This lake is actually an excavation lake. A remnant of human extraction. The lake was created between 1978 and 1982, when sand was needed for the extension of a closeby highway. Then the low ground water of Bergedorf filled it to become what is now the See(lake) Hinterm Horn.

Also all of the other lakes in this area that have shaped so many of my childhood memories have a similar history. The Boberger See and Eichbaumsee are past sand pits. Then there is one, that my father spent many of his childhood days at, as he grew up in the same area of the city; the Tonteich- Clay Lake. This lake formed after the local brickyard opened in 1875 and started extracting clay here. The factory burned down and never reopened, but the borrow pit stayed and slowly filled with water over the years.

One interesting fact here is the acidity of the water, as the clay bed of the lake created a scenery, that is not inhabitable for many species such as most fish and mosquitos.

I continued searching for the history of the lakes I have been visiting most in Germany and the Netherlands, realizing that almost all of them are excavation lakes; residues of surface mining.

Along my deep dive I sent an email to the company supplying our school with clay. On their website they mention the act of recultivation and how the process of clay extraction can be done in the most reciprocal way.

But how sustainable and reciprocal can a process be when something is taken that can never be returned?

6. Bodies of Water

Our bodies of water

dive into

a body of water

turns into

bodies of water

dive into

a body of water.

7. A confusing swimming lesson, with winds between 0 and 100mph and occasional water up the nose

I bathe in the resonating sound of his deep voice, unable to think clearly or respond.

I bathe in melodies, intoxicated and surrounded by alienated, yet oddly connected bodies.

I bathe my naked body in an icy stream, who directly made its way from the mountains, stopping my breath for a second.

I bathe in the giggles shared with friends, allowing each other to make increasingly inappropriate jokes throughout the evening.

I bathe in your hug, wanting to request another one as soon as we let go of the embrace.

Go with the waves of your emotions, my therapist said.

Isn't life like a confusing swimming lesson, with winds switching between 0 and 100mph, and occasional water up the nose?

8. Lessons from lullabies

A dramatic scream for help, followed by rhythmic bouncing of the little body combined with a calming humming or lullaby, possibly for both sides to cope with the outburst of emotions.

Her sister recently gave birth to a little girl called Svea, so she began observing family members humming and singing to this little creature to calm her down. Making up their own songs and melodies, that by repetition seem to work more and more. A beautiful reminder of the soothing power of our voices and melody in general.

She came from a musical family, in which it is normal to sing songs on Christmas day in 4-part harmony (not to the excitement of all 10 cousins) and have jam sessions and choir rehearsals in our living room. A room hosting probably 100 instruments, a playground which she sadly only started to appreciate after she moved out.

Her sister recently became a certified music therapist and the mother spend much of her free time drumming in a percussion group on the side of local protests, practicing with her folk music band or conducting a choir that she had started almost 30 years ago. Her father and aunt were members as well and she loved listening to her father practicing the bassline of the choir songs.

In her parents house one will often hear a humming or whistling melody, coming from the vocal cords of her father. Melodies, sometimes familiar, sometimes seemingly random.

The sisters had been observing this behavior with the assumptious conclusion that this is his way of relieving stress too.

Recently on the phone, her mama stated: “if I wouldn't make music in these times, I think I would be an addict. I would be drinking, I would take drugs.” This woman has never touched drugs, except for alcohol and nicotine in her life. And even if she might be slightly over exaggerating, you get the point.

So basically she had plenty of examples in my family for how musical experiences could be used in various ways to soothe and connect to each other. Not just the hippies understood music as a medium to strengthen political movements through music and build a community based on pacifistic ideals.

When words don’t do justice anymore, the internationally understood language of music can decrease blood pressure almost unnoticed with its vibrations.

She leaves her front door, takes her phone from her pocket, puts on a song, puts in her headphones and starts cycling, singing loudly for herself and whoever she passes on her way.

9. Lehels House

A picturesque drive through the Hungarian countryside brought the three friends to the overgrown door of a beautifully self build cob house.

Lehel, the old man who build it had been off the radar for a while now, people at the local market asking Amber about him, as he has not been selling his glasses of wheatgrass pulp over there for weeks by now. She doesn't know where he has been.

She knows the code to his number lock and they let themselves in.

They spend the night inside the house from mud and straw, high, dancing on the various levels and on top of the huge clay oven in the center of it, singing, playing the guitar, wondering where the creator of this place could possibly be.

10. Body of water

You became my home

you became my obsession

you became my teacher

you became my nurture

you became my place of rest

you became my place of shame

you became my body

you became a body of water.