Diagenesis
A cellar made of bricks in Vienna’s historical center becomes the setting for an archaeological fiction and a speculative geological scenario. Diagenesis, an installation shaped by the displacement, transformation, and collaboration with local matter. A dialogue between the human and other-than-human; between past, present, and future.
Through processes of chemical weathering and material erosion, the work rethinks decay not as destruction but as a generative force. Diagenesis stages a site where the deep time of Earth’s crust, urban material histories, and imagined geologies converge.
The project consisted of a ceramic installation in a historical brick cellar in the city center of Vienna, where the current state of the brick walls served as the point of departure for the conceptualization and research process.
Three earthly, active bodies lying on cellar dust were framed by a brick structure, undergoing a chemical weathering process in which their material composition reacted to acidity -decaying and growing simultaneously. Each body existed at a different stage of transformation, following its own rhythm in response to the surrounding temperature and humidity.
Using locally sourced clay from key sites such as Wienerberg Lake -a former clay mine where Vienna’s largest brick producer once extracted clay- and other locations across the Vienna Basin, the ceramic objects embody the stories that are intertwined in their materiality.
During the process, the former clay pit was visited, clay was foraged and tested in different ways.
Whether to use it as a glaze or just a ceramic body.
Loam? from Bisamberg was incorporated along with small stone incrustations, both with a high content in Calcium Carbonate.
Tests on stones from different areas around Vienna were also tested for calcium carbonate content.
The decision of incorporating these materials is a result of observations in the same walls of the cellar, where not only bricks were used for building, but big stone blocks as well. The cellar in itself is like a huge hollow conglomerate, slowly disintegrating and transforming itself.
The project Latentes I was part of the research process for the installation.
Diagenesis (2025)
Installation
Viennese Clays, limestone, sediments, acetic acid, brick dust, foraged bricks
With the kind human support of:
Ceramics Studio, Die Angewandte
Prof. Johannes Weber, Conservation department, Die Angewandte
Art & Science department, Die Angewandte
Photography:
Tatiana Del Valle
José Manuel Oviedo Cruz
Exhibited at:
Minuszwei
Domgasse 6, 1010 Vienna.