The reading of a site through its ground, the mud.
The mud as a matter that offends, that is ignoble and unworthy. With its only purpose to downgrade. A carrier of degradation. [Bataille, l’ informe]. It blemishes the form. It reduces it. It distracts meaning and significance. The mud is connected to the dirt and the filth. According to our approach, mud is a carrier of the condition of intermediate, a condition that defines the selected site. The literality of the mud, the alteration between a liquid and a solid state, leads us to a constant vacillation and ambivalence of the meaning of the site. Mud make its variability apparent. The flow in it, as well. It demonstrates its instability. The site is blurred and confused. Since we are referring to a marshy area, the site presents a muddy condition to both its form and meaning. The chosen area is a complex of lagoons, that is located between the island of Lefkas and the mainland. So the mud is its literal soil. Theliteral site.
Mud as the non-clear and the non-defined. It slips away determination, and classification as well. The matter out of place. [Douglas]. The threatening unclear. And it is this threatening that concerns us. Mud is now acquiring a body, and as a being, it is shaped facing the human. So that he is confronting it. The sticky condition of the mud, attaches to the human’s skin and violates the boundary between them. [Sartre] The body of the mud leads us to its own skin. A skin that is wounded, decayed and almost dead.
The body of the mud, of the site, of the city and the human’ s body.
The thesis is about an investigation, in relation with a site, which is constantly present as a reference. An investigation of matter, materiality, form, of the specific site and of the site as a concept. An ongoing procedure, an open reading that attempts to offer an opening to the site itself, to re-construct and re-compose it. Methods and practices, fragments of the procedure, and mainly fragments of the specific site are transferred inside a defined room. [Smithson]
