microbial books

As part of a larger project seeking to express the lithic agency of stone, a chance digression into puddles of tannin-stained waters of Djara Country (Dja Dja Warrung, central Victoria, Australia) led to films of microbial slime transferring to paper. The process is a distant cousin to mordançage but in this case, it is microbial life that seeks the paper, forming a loose collaboration. The surface slime grows in the heat, a byproduct of iron oxidising bacteria. The fragile film draws itself into complex platelets with jagged, irregular edges, reminiscent of landscapes with distant stained horizons, or basalt boulders, lava chunks and pyroclastic flows. This largely uncontrollable alliance depends on bacterial agency, water, weather, a slow choreography of waiting over days, and fine motor skill.

The microbial films adhered to watercolour paper cut into the form of a snake-fold book. Each folded book forms a strip 22 x 174 x 0.4 cm. Some have been additionally printed with photogravure etchings of local basalt boulders.

Part of the Lithic Traces in the Archive Project these were exhibited in Subduction and A volcano in my backyard?