Heart of consciousness (chapter one) (2018)

 

“On a psychological level, mental time travel, or the ability to relive the past and imagine the future, is thought to be at the heart of consciousness, and this extraordinary cognitive ability is possible thanks to time perception. Interestingly, this core ability is compromised in Alzheimer’s disease.” (www.nature.com)

 

The red clay was extracted directly from the ground, kneaded, pushed into moulds and baked in the oven. Becoming bricks, functioning as one-celled objects.They would draw a blueprint, create a structure and build the body. The castle would stand tall on its pedestal island in the inlet and take in the scene of green hills and villages surrounding it. It was power. But time brought transformation and the once great and visible authority rising in the landscape lost its influence. The bricks were slowly dismantled, loaded on ships and transported to Copenhagen. The castle on the island was Kalø Castle and it would from now on be Kalø Castle Ruin. In Copenhagen the once extracted red clay from the landscape of Kalø was being built into a new castle, Charlottenborg, at the central square of Kongens Nytorv. The bricks would make up the walls of what was later to become the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts. Back at Kalø the ruin slumbered for many centuries before archaeologists rediscovered its historic worth and excavated it. Not much was left of the old walls so the decision was made to rebuild some of the castle walls with new material, red clay taken from another landscape.

 

Heart of consciousness is a conscious attention to the passage of time, of relocation of material and place, and about remembering and forgetting. Can something old linger in the shape of the new?

 

Analogue double-exposed photography.