(1) Translator’s note:
Since the German word Kohle means both charcoal and coal, in the instances where both meanings apply, this dual form has been used.

(CHAR)COAL (1) We are familiar with (char)coal through the various uses we have for it: as a source of heating, a source of energy, and an artistic material. When whole trees are transformed into charcoal and then assembled anew, not only does time stand still, but the trees are preserved for all eternity. This text follows on from our dialogue „Langer Atem“ on 22 May, 2013 in the Heidelberg Kunstverein and takes the border-crossing substance (char)coal as the starting point for investigating the phenomena of space and time, and for thinking together about processes of transformation.

FORM. Intimate with form, crystalline and fragile, light as a feather, entirely light-absorbent: contradictoriness materialized. Although (char)coal is a familiar material, its piercing black and rainbow-coloured sheen seems to hail from another world. Despite its organic origins, it seems more like a black mineral – making its lightness all the more surprising when we hold a piece of it in our hands. (Char)coal hovers compellingly between opposite forces, whose effects can truly be felt in its presence. It reveals itself as a materialized border-crosser, a tongue-in-cheek trickster, liminality incarnate. [JW]

SPACE. In liminality – from the Latin limen, meaning threshold – the spatial is already implied. Liminality as a state typical of a transitional phase, social transitions that are reinforced by rites and rituals. Ritual is also a spatialisation of the social in a way. A sensitive state which marginalizes those involved in it. But it is also a state with the potential for creativity.
For „Minneapolis Black“ (2012) | transformed an entire tree into charcoal – an American elm – which was then suspended in the space in a state somewhere between drawing and sculpture. It was all there in fragments: the trunk, the branches, and the crown with the first buds. All the pieces were arranged serially in parallel lines, crossing the space at a diagonal. Contrary to the vertical growth of the elm outside in nature. inside the branches and twigs were suspended in horizontal equilibrium, as symbolic essence. If sculpture must always solve the problem of balance, here the precariousness of balance also encounters the fragile brittleness of charcoal. A material we associate with drawing. The visitor had to pace up and down the exhibition, walk through it – before what from a distance looked like an abstract spatial drawing (black lines against a white wall) – dissolved into a physical multiplicity of views. [UM]

PROCESS. To get closer to (char)coal it is helpful to practise thinking as process. The key image in terms of (char)coal-thinking is the breathing process. Breathing is a part of all organic life – a process that sustains life and also maintains its equilibrium. The development of the biosphere in which we live today is a micro-moment in a breathing process that has been going on for millions of years. Without plants there is no breath. One organism’s exhalation is another’s inhalation. Inhale – exhale – inhale – exhale – inhale – … (Char)coal, on the other hand, holds its breath. It bathes in the moment of standstill – and steps out of the moment of ephemeral life and into eternity. It abandons the rule of relationships in general – the construction and destruction of the flow of life. Its origins can be regarded as an accident – or, when it comes to human inter-vention, as an act of violence. [JW]

TRANSFORMATION. If we hold our breath, we concentrate, stop talking, stop breathing, hold still, or fixate on something. (Char)coal, in its uniquely aggregate state, always represents in my mind a very particular form of concentration and compression. The process of „transforming“ wood into charcoal is all about physical work in the countryside, under an open sky, with lots of fire and smoke, and over the course of several days. The site-specific collections and deconstruction of trees, pieces of drift wood, or wood found on the street prompted me to archive my various findings, charcoal branches, and carbonized bushes. The term Anthrakothek combines the Greek words anthrax (coal) and bibliothéke (book room). As I see it, in the exhibition context transformation does not just involve the translation of wood into another medium, it’s about trees, branches, wooden rulers, and metre rules becoming objects and drawings in space – materialized memories – material with a memory and a language of its own – sounds that are overlaid with their own echoes. [UM]

NATURE. There are two main paths that lead us to (char)coal: one geological (natural) and one chemical (cultural). But in the very beginning there is life. Vegetable life is characterized by an excessive anabolic metabolism. Drinking sunlight and eating air the plant slowly constructs its body out of carbon, which it keeps compressing further into filigree live forms – all the while exhaling oxygen and giving it on to other life and its fiery transformation process. At the end of a plant’s life the remains of its body are absorbed by the community and passed on to other life cycles. Mostly. Sometimes, however. an accident happens and organic bodies are disconnected from their cycles.
A tree that falls down becomes covered in water and coated by other organic and mineral materials. Pressure continues to mount until eventually the tree is entirely sealed off from oxygen, the element of change.
Under water we hold our breath… Over time (a very, very long time) pressure and oxygen-exclusion sign over organic material into mineral. Organic compounds are broken down, water is literally squeezed out of the body of life – until carbon is all that re-mains. And mineral elements. If coal ever sees the light of day again it no longer has access to life cycles as such. Microorganisms and larger animals can literally break their teeth biting on coal. An unpalatable pleasure. [JW]

CULTURE. The other path leads us through the chemical experiment – either in the laboratory, with the help of the Bunsen burner and crucible, or in the woods, inside a stacked charcoal kiln. The experiment recreates the „natural“ creation of charcoal in a chemical way. What we do not need is oxygen. What we do not have is time. In order to outwit time we must do business with fire. In order to trigger the magical transformation of organic material into charcoal we must interrupt the natural breathing processes of the world. And the last thing we want to bring about is combustion. Fine powdery ash, the mineral pole of all lifeforms, would be the result. All charcoal-in-the-making can do is hold its breath. The power of fire and the increase in temperature expel most organic compounds and matter’s watery part. What remains is the charcoal structure and the mineral part. Charcoal is a piece of mineralized life. If you try to reintroduce this substance to breathing processes, as fuel for example, you will need to be very persuasive indeed, and not skimp on activating energy. Charcoal is not easily woken from unconsciousness. But the heat it generates provides humans with an entirely new level of access to inorganic elements. [JW]

LANDSCAPE. In the Heidelberg Kunstverein a variety of different materials were used to create a complex landscape that responded to the structure of the space. Charcoal, ash, sand, clay, wood, metal, and pigments in various aggregate states were distributed throughout the space. My modus operandi resembled that of an archaeological dig, in that during the install I subjected the space to a process of „stripping away“, setting up, modifying, and dismantling, and ultimately leaving in place fragments of the work that had gone before. Here, too, the viewer was called upon to navigate the traces and (hi)stories in the exhibition allowing serendipity to reveal the spatial and temporal volumes of (char)coal in all its expansiveness and lightness. [UM]

(HI)STORIES. Smoke over a sea of trees. This can be one of two things: outlaws or charcoal makers. In cultural history (char)coal was popular with a very particular type of border-crosser: charcoal makers and blacksmiths. They shared with it an extended moment of liminality.
In the feudal Middle Ages living in the woods was a punishable offence. The woods were home to bandits, demons, the wild man – and charcoal makers. In order to maintain the charcoal kilns they had special permission to live in the woods. They were the midwives of a highly desirable, quasi-magical raw material. Shielding the wood inside the charcoal oven with a system of flowing air was no mean feat. A sudden gust of wind or an unexpected storm could destroy all the hard work. To coax black gold into being the charcoal maker had to block off the elements and stoke the fire with caution and vigilance. In the hands of another border-crosser, the blacksmith, coal facilitated an essential shape shifting. The coal fire was the source of the blacksmith’s magic and craft. Here the transformational power of coal could be experienced palpably. The whispering heat of the coal elicited otherwise inert metals out of otherwise inaccessible rocks. In the molten metal bath congealed resources were brought into flux. The blacksmith was the artist of this interstitial zone. He was able to deploy his magic in this moment of transition and weave it into delightful or terrifying artefacts.
Blacksmiths were venerated and feared in equal measure. Like charcoal makers they occupied the margins of society. Just think of the dwarfish, limping Hephaistos in Greek mythology, humiliated and exploited by the other gods, but whose cunning ultimately won him the upper hand. Or of Mime in Nordic mythology or Illmarinen in the Finnish Kalevala. They have many qualities in common, but above all, they all depend on (char)coal to practise their magical craft. The blacksmith is a shaman and his magical horse is coal. [JW]

TIME. In my works you can continue thinking about notions of time, temporality, and eternity for ever, as they unfold further and further. (Char)coal not only lingers in different time cycles, it is always trying to balance the ordinary with the extraordinary, it is hungry for oxygen, it seeks contact. What interested me in my most recent work, „Collaboration with the Universe“, on the veranda of the old library in Steinhöfel, was what happens when a work of art this fragile leaves the protected context of the exhibition.
For two weeks a swarm of 300 charcoal branches and twigs hovered outside, exposed to the elements day and night. Swinging, dangling and tinkling – high and fine. A mesh was made by joining together carbonized branches and twigs in pairs of approximately the same weight. If at any time a branch or twig broke off the other one of the pair would stabilize the fragile partnership, others were simply allowed to fall.
It was a visual and acoustic event between the charcoal, nature’s pulsations, and the trees in the park swaying in the wind – halted in time and yet insatiable. The mesh of fragments absorbed the vibrations of the wind, oscillating between fragility and invulnerability to the surrounding life processes in the open air, in a shifting soundscape of chinking tinkling.
(Char)coal exists in a permanently timeless aggregate state, suspended in time, yet it is always moving, seeking out contact, exchange, and collaboration. Its sculptural resonance extends throughout the space, seeking anchorage in space, and to resonate within us a little longer. [UM]

Translation: Lucy Powell