Liminal Lands

2D Cinematic Video & VR
Commissioned by Luma Arles, 2021

“We live on more timescales than we can grasp. At any given moment, human and non-human species execute countless variations of activity and events. Some are visible and can be felt, others remain unnoticed or mysterious but yet distinct and complex. Forces and unseen patterns constantly negotiate, shape and reshape the world we live in. Our physiological structure, our bodies and senses are unable to perceive or even imagine these unfamiliar to us, expansive temporal and spatial scales, the countless worlds and processes that are constantly taking place around us, and which transgress the boundaries of the physical field of our senses.

Jakob Kudsk Steensen’s work, Liminal Lands draws attention to the lesser-explored spaces that are not bound to the phenomena we have to understand and appreciate in our daily lives. Interested in symbiotic coexistence, micro-macro scales of existence and multi temporal realities, Steensen localizes his focus in a specific area of the Camargue, the wetlands of the Rhone delta, and the area of the Salin de Giraud. It is a landscape formed 7000 years ago, transformed through cultivation for its salt through time, but connected to energies from an ancient sea at the edge of the mediterranean. Immersing himself in the landscape December 2019 to Summer 2020, Jakob Kudsk Steensen records visuals and sounds of silent and unseen to us organic qualities - documenting hyper local rhythms of life across the landscape as it crystallizes, forming a mantle of salt across colorful worlds of algae, bacteria and organisms. These qualities exist at the edge of our actual experience and they define a new horizon, where intimacy with the environment and the place reveal multiple possibilities for re-examining our position in it.

The crystallization becomes a medium similar to digital technology. A medium that stores and transports matter across boundaries of bodies, spaces and devices. Salt is a medium binding nutrients to bodies and landscapes. Salt preserves, kills, and enables life to exist.

Steensen constructs non-linear narratives of events that unfold in micro-scale. A plant’s roots form a sprawling underground network that slowly attaches itself to a rock formation; a feather dissolves on a bed of dead matter, with its bone turning into a host for salt particles’ crystallisation, while algae and bacterial lifeforms absorb nutrients in a slowly oscillating rhythm, sedimenting a thin crust of microcystins on a mineral plate. Avian and amphibian vocalisations appear in his work as vivid forms, creating pulsating motions that then evaporate in a perceived distance. Crystalline minerals generate a range of intense patterns and effects transformed by the perception of wavelengths of light that reveal themselves in the form of different spectral hues.Liminal Lands is a transitional zone where fundamental energies of sun, wind, water and bacteria connect to participants' bodies in virtual reality. Through interactive multiplayer technology, physical movements, spatial sounds and textures synchronize into a musical composition driven by immersed participants. Liminal Lands reveals life-shaping transformations, invisible to the naked eye. It begins slow and rhythmic, guiding from the familiar human realm towards a metamorphosis of life and technology.”

- Vassilis Oikonomopoulis, Senior Curator at Luma Arles

Video: Liminal Lands trailer (1:38) - Jakob Kudsk Steensen, 2021. Courtesy of the artist.

Installation - Luma Arles

PRÉLUDE - La Mécanique Générale at LUMA ARLES
June 26, 2021 – January 2022
Arles, France

Liminal Lands was originally commissioned by Luma Arles for the Prélude exhibition. The piece consists of video, virtual reality, and physical elements. The floors of Liminal Lands are made with artisans in Arles. The sculptural floors marks a shift from the museum space towards another reality, by transforming the ground you walk on. Each floor is made from crystallized salt infused with living algae, creating tones from the worlds of the Camargue and Salin-De-Giraud wetlands. The floors function as an archipelago inside of exhibition spaces, creating pathways and diversions simultaneously.

To create the physical floors, tones of algae, water and salt was first digitized outside across the salt marshes of the Camargue, then recreated inside using the same organic materials. By working with local craftsmen in Arles, the physical floors marks the beginning of ways to preserve and revive sensibilities of local crafts in our future virtual world makings.

Liminal Lands Text: Nora Khan

“I begin on the calm, cracked salt flats of Salin de Giraud, at the gray and rose blush frontier Liminal Lands between sea and marsh, a “place with no borders” encircled by a glittering, matte black, simulated sea. Calls of unknown birds and frogs work their way into my skin. Salt water hosts algae that runs a brilliant pink; the algae tints native flamingoes who are not seen in the headset, but are certainly heard.

Moving from the flats, I am entrained in shifting perspectives. In eighteen minutes, my focus will be moved from pool to dank mud bed to subterranean cavern to the crest of a salt pillar. I pace in a pool, edging along hyperreal rocks which push me away when I lean in too close. The light is either that before dawn or dusk, and so it is impossible to tell what time it is. I sink through the ground to an underworld …”

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Liminal lands: nora khan