Sand, Soil

Sitting Sediments

Sediment comes from the Latin word Sedere, meaning “to settle” or “sit.” in this way, Sediment is intended for all solid material that moves and deposits in a new location. Sediments move around the globe in a closed cycle. Rivers transport sediments from mountain ranges into the sea. According to the source-to-sink theory, the problem of lack of sedimentation lies in highly geo-engineered environments. The project is an ongoing research project on the geopolitical consequences of human intervention on geological time scales such as sediments. By mapping the sediments in the Venice lagoon, Sitting Sediments investigates how human intervention in these places is understood and how different flows and forces move and shape the earth alongside humans. That holistic approach that lights the sediment issue raises the question of how that inorganic matter has fallouts on cultural, ecological, scientific and economic perceptions.

In recent decades, the Venice lagoon has experienced a loss of morphological diversity. Examples of this are the Barene, which has shrunk from 255 km2 to 70 km2 within a century; the average depth of the lagoon, which has fallen from 49 cm in 1901 to 1.45 m at present, with peaks of more than 2.5 m, the critical zone in which sediment no longer moves. The proportion of sediment entering and leaving the lagoon is now decreasing, a phenomenon known as erosion. The lagoon in Venice is a transitional environment between land and water. Its general morphology depends on the relationship between 2 factors: an influx of sediments from sea or rivers and the erosive action of waves and tides. In the case of Venice Lagoon, it is inevitable to mention also a third factor, human anthropisation, which brings us to the point of considering it instead of a regulated sea bay. This transition resumed the management of this ecosystem during the last centuries. From the 1600s, rivers diverged to stop sediment inputs and control the landfilling process that was transforming the lagoon into land. Today, the lagoon is subject to the opposite phenomenon and is becoming a part of the sea. After the influx of sediments had been reduced to a minimum, the attempts to fight the sea level rose with the Mose. Other forces like tourism, aquaculture, and cruise ship traffic almost irreversibly changed the site.

To address this problem, the project proposes a poetic prism through which sediment can be returned to places where it has been missing due to human intervention. Unstable, fragile, yet grounded and functional - the quality of sediment as a material is at the heart of the project, both physically and metaphorically.
In this optimistic intervention, the lagoon's resilience can regain strength with the help of the stool, on which sediments can settle again. Through a poetic and metaphorical act, the sediments will embark on a journey back to the lagoon. In this way, the stool is a time-based installation meant to be carried away by the water and become part of the site.

Making process

The process consists of four steps. Finding the sediments, the mould, the drying time and returning the stool to the place with a high erosion rate. The sediments (sand, earth, stones, clay) are collected from various locations, sorted and soaked. In the second step, they are placed in a waterproof mould, dried and pressed over a longer period of time. The stool's design consists of simple geometric blocks that can be assembled to form different shapes and adjusted for different needs.

Text submitted by the maker and edited by the Future Materials Bank. For information about reproducing (a part of) this text, please contact the maker.