Workshop for qualitative soil analysis by circular chromatography.
Circular chromatography is a chemical method of separating the components of a substance that biodynamic farmers use to analyze soils. It is a laboratory process to create drawings as a reaction of silver nitrate to the light and to the natural substance being studied. In this way the analyzed substances manifest their characteristics in images which are a visible expression of their quality and vital forces, Soil chromatographies make visible the dirt’s mineral and organic composition, their structure, the microbiological and enzymatic activity and the flow of life, in drawings that can be read in terms of aesthetic criteria such as beauty, the harmony of colours and the vitality of the forms involved, as for artworks.
It is a qualitative rather than quantitative type of analysis that I propose to change our way of seeing things.
During the workshop, we realised together the process of image formation, with samples brought by participants.
The first workshop was held in 2015 during the residency at MACRO, Rome, together with the museum’s Education Office.
chromaLab_MACRO, Rome.
– In 2016, during a residency at Utopiana, Geneva (CH), the focus turned to the city’s urban soils.
– In 2017, in collaboration with the XGBML project, a project of Raphaëlle Mueller and Vanessa Lorenzo, and Utopiana, Geneve, we analyzed samples of contaminated soils and water.
chromaLab_contaminated soils, Geneve
– Nel 2018 chromaLab_Humus Sapiens, Stuttgart
– Nel 2018, chromaLab, PAV, Torino