For the living. My response is always a burial, rather an upturned crypt above the earth, an inverted groove cast with the trowel in this recording as a long line in concrete through and against the earth. Plastic pipes enter the pavement and are sealed roughly at the edges with the same mix of sand and cement. Inversely, rusted steel spines emerge from crumbled concrete, a salt white crystal sups into the grooves.

This piece is an edited recording of that burial, in premixed fast setting concrete, the etching or inversion of the last work into a freshly trowelled layer. It took place at the site of the crypt, above ground. It was buried as far as I remember in Copenhagen, close to the botanical gardens. Or was it in Salo, in the sand beneath the two still catfish, wondered if they were still alive?  I think finally it must have been in the grounds of Salpêtrière, in Paris; a bloom, flush or blossom of saltpeter was scraped from the basement walls there and played back with a stick.

Martin Howse/ August 2014

Martin Howse is occupied with an artistic investigation of the links between the earth (geophysical phenomena), software and the human psyche (psychogeophysics), proposing a return to animism within a critical misuse of scientific technology. Through the construction of experimental situations (within process-driven performance, laboratories, walks, and workshops), material art works and texts, Martin Howse explores the rich links between substance or materials and execution or protocol, excavating issues of visibility and of hiding within the world. For the last ten years he has collaborated on numerous open-laboratory style projects and performed, published, lectured and exhibited diversely. He is equally the creator of the skin-driven audio divination module, aka. The Dark Interpreter.