Scattering – Der Beginn eines Abenteuers

"For more than a year and a half, we have been exploring what it means to land on Earth in the magnificent framework of the Critical Zones exhibit at ZKM.
The show has been interrupted several times by the pandemic, but the whole ZKM staff has managed to keep the exploration going.
Actually the virus was a painful but good guide to make visitors understand what it means to live locked down inside the tiny limits of the Critical Zone!
But now the show is ending and its results have to be spread around not only through the beautiful catalog but also through an original video event.
This is what we call SCATTERING because now that history is changing its direction and getting out of its old rut we have to scatter around to explore where to land for good.
We have assembled texts and sounds to make you feel at a distance what it means to live in the Critical Zone and how you could spread those affects around. 
The whole team assembled for you thank you very much for your participation.  
And now pay attention, wear your earphones and follow the instructions so as to participate fully to the SCATTERING event."

Bruno Latour

Working with Bruno Latour and Jérôme Gaillardet over the last few years on projects related to the Critical Zone I had the idea to compose a cycle of pieces called “Critical zone”. To compose not for musicians, but “with” musicians.

The idea was to propose a kind of sonic metaphor of the Critical Zone, of its internal cycles, its composition, of its entanglements and interactions … and to be able not only to listen to it, but also to feel it. Landing in the Critical Zone means becoming conscious of our real world, to be more sensitive to it, to perceive processes of our planet that modern behaviour made us ignore.

The musical Cycle “Critical Zones” seeks to create music inviting us to be more attentive to our world. Music that tries to make us listen to the Critical Zone, without looking at it from above, but feeling it from the inside… and from different points of view.

In this cycle, certain musical pieces also evoke the feelings, the "affects" –  a term used by Spinoza and in use in the Baroque period – that this "discovery" can generate in us, but also those that we need to be able to apprehend and integrate, as much intellectually as sensorially, this change of paradigm, of vision of the world.

Those last two years, being confined in a “new world” has accelerated our perception. But in the current situation, it is also about finding ways to stay optimistic... in order to do this, echoing Bruno's idea of scattering, of getting lost and finding new ways of exploring this Critical Zone in all directions, we have put our performance under the sign of the "scat" – this particular way of improvising in jazz ... And to do this we will have to begin with Ella Fitzgerald.

"Prologue – intra-terrestrial"

(Violes – orgue – basson - électroacoustique)

L’invention de la Zone critique grâce à la vie primitive intraterrestre et aux premières chimiosynthèses, avant que les vivants ne soient capables de tirer leur énergie du soleil.

The critical zone appeared when primitive “intra-terrestrial” life started to invent the first chimiosynthesis reactions before living organisms became capable of using solar energy.

"Biosphere" – Hélios et Vulcain

(Violes – orgue - électroacoustique - dulciane alto)

La ZC est le lieu du conflit entre l’énergie du soleil (la photosynthèse) et celle de l’intérieur de la terre, la tectonique des plaques, exploité par les vivants.

The Critical zone is a conflict zone between the sun’s energy (that triggers photosynthesis) and Earth’s interior energy (that drive plate tectonics) and which is exploited and engineered by the living organisms.

"Solastagia "

(Voix - violes – flûte à bec basse – orgue + électroacoustique)

Un des affects caractéristiques de l’anthropocène.

 One of the characteristic affects of the anthropocene.

"Wetness"

(Voix - violes – instruments à vent – orgue – électroacoustique)

Le fleuve n’est pas un canal transportant de l’eau, mais une forme de coalescence des gouttes de pluie, un moment du cycle de l’eau.

The river is not canal conveying water but a transient form of collated rain drops, a passage in the water cycle.

"Gaia – Bewilderment " (extrait)

(Voix – Sensel/instrument électronique)

La métamorphose de la Terre est le résultat de processus physico-chimiques complexes orchestrés par et pour les vivants.

The Earth’s metamorphosis by Gaia is resulting from physical and chemical processes all orchestrated by or for living organisms.

"Cosmologies"

(Voix - violes – instruments à vent – orgue – électroacoustique)

Le cycle géologique, le cycle de l’eau et le cycle des vivants ont maintenu ensemble l’habitabilité de la Terre pendant des milliards d’années. A l’opposé, la vision du monde des modernes imposée par leurs modes d’existence menace cette habitabilité.

 The geological cycle, the water cycle, and the biolological cycles have maintained the Earth’s habitability during billions of years and now. At the opposite, the way the moderns see the cosmos, imposed by their modes of existence, is threating this habitability

"Scattering"

(Voix - Violes – orgue – flûtes à bec - basson - bandes enregistrées – électroacoustique – Sensel/instrument électronique)

Une nouvelle époque s’ouvre à nous, nécessitant une nouvelle écoute, l’exploration de nouveaux possibles… nous permettant «d’atterrir» et de pouvoir ainsi «s’égailler» dans les limites de la Zone critique.

A new era is coming, requiring new listening, the exploration of new possible worlds, and allowing us to 'land' on earth, to rejoice within the strict confines of the critical zones.

Excerpt and edited from Volk, Tyler "Gaia’s Body Toward a Physiology of Earth"

We should think about loops of influence involving Gaia, Helios, and Vulcan. We should focus on loops within Gaia, specifically those that connect the parts of Gaia that might be considered "doorways" with all its other parts. The presence of clouds closes some doors to the entry of the sun's energy. Vegetation, which absorbs more energy than smoother, lighter, more reflective surfaces such as rock or ice, opens some doors to the entry of solar energy into the system. The heaves of Vulcan push rocks up to the surface, but how rapidly and completely they dissolve (rather than just crumble) is largely up to Gaia. Lichens dissolve rocks faster than air and rain do by themselves. [This ability of life to intensify the rate of chemical weathering, and thus the entry of certain elements into the gaian system, is called the biotic enhancement of weathering, and it has been important in coupling biological evolution and atmospheric chemistry.] A lichen lives within Gaia but is connected to Helios and Vulcan. From Helios it gets the high-energy photons for photosynthesis, warmth to speed its chemical reactions, and energy that circulates the atmosphere and thus links it to all life. From Vulcan it gets the bluff-habitat and source of nutritious minerals-put in place by eruptions millions of years before, chipped and dissolved away by the erosional attributes of Gaia, which expose fresh surfaces. And similarly to the lichen microcosm, Gaia as a whole resides between two great forces - energy presences - one dorsal, the other ventral. Helios does not participate in a loop of mutual influence with Gaia; the influence consists, rather, of a one-way arrow, from Helios to Gaia. Vulcan's deep, emerging heat is a primordial fact of Earth's geology that is independent of any gaian influence. Much is given for free to Gaia across its dorsal and ventral borders by Helios and Vulcan. From Helios comes the energy to power photosynthesis and to drive the circulations of air and water that unite life into a system. The energy of Vulcan drives diverse fluxes of matter and presents a variety of geological and geographical habitats across Earth's surface. The unity of this trinity is what systems theorists call boundary conditions: conditions that act on Gaia. But there exists a deeper aspect to the unity, because the important loops of causation are not among Gaia, Helios, and Vulcan but among the parts of Gaia.

"Exiled at home" original poem by Bruno Latour

Often I have come to believe

That my train was leaving station

Until looking at a lamppost

I saw my mistake

And had to wait and wait again

While from the next platform

Another train was darting away

With loads of travellers

Leaving for some foreign land

Could I be mistaken again

When I look over my place

From the window of my own room

It seems that I have travelled far away

From the land of my youth

To sadder and bleaker places

Miles and miles have passed

So much that I feel

In this deserted landscape

As a stranger in a foreign land

What a relief it would be

To look at the lamppost again

And see my mistake

And have to wait and wait again

In the country of my youth

While the other trains

Have gone darting away

With their loads of migrants

Travelling to their deserted landscape

Ah! but when I look and look again

At the lamppost over my door

I am shocked to see

That I have not moved an inch

And that it is the landscape

All around my home

That has moved away

Transporting me

The secluded and immobile me

In one of those trains

Darting away so fast oh so very fast

In some of those bleak and deserted lands

That used to be mine

With their loads of migrants

That are coming home

Exiled in their own room

Without having moved an inch

Stuck

On the same deserted platform.

Excerpt from J. Chen, J. Gaillardet, P. Louvat "Zinc Isotopes in the Seine River Waters"

By measuring the abundances of Zinc isotopes in the Seine river in Paris as a proxy for the origin of zinc, we show that dissolved Zinc in the Seine River is more than 90% of anthropogenic origin compared to natural sources. Roof leaching from Paris conurbation appears as a major source of Zn, characterized by low delta sixty six Zinc values (δ66Zn) that are distinct from other natural and anthropogenic sources of Zn. Our study highlights the absence in Paris of a distinctive Zinc isotopic signatures of fertilizer, compost or rain in river waters from the upstream rural areas, and therefore suggests the strong retention of Zn in the agricultural soils of the Paris Basin.

Excerpt from Anuradha Mathur and Dilip da Cunha "Wetness is Everywhere, Why Do We See Water Somewhere?"

In Sindhu [India], Ganga is not a goddess that descends from the “heavens” at a point, to flow from there through mountains, plains, and delta between firmly drawn lines that she repeatedly violates. Rather, she is a goddess who arrives on the monsoon wind, invigorating a wet- ness that is already everywhere to some degree. People celebrate her arrival as the Descent of Ganga.5 Her wetness defies the map. It does not necessarily run to the sea. It evaporates, transpires, osmotes, soaks, in addition to staying in places for varying dura- tions ranging from seconds and days to centuries and eons. The only anchor she offers people is the time of her arrival, the first moment of the hydrologic cycle. 

Anchored in this moment, inhabitants of Sindhu live materially, practically, and philosophically inwetness rather than on land serviced by water. The air thickens, the soil saturates, and flora and fauna come to life. Snakes, centipedes, and scorpions are born out of nothing. At night, myriads of moths flutter around the lamps ...

Excerpt from Alexandra Arènes Architectural Design at the Time of the Anthropocene – A Gaia-graphic Approach to the Critical Zones, "Landscape ..."

Landscape forms when a fungus encounters a rock it eats to extract calcium and phosphorus, to produce and exchange sugar with a root that grows a plant, that shades for a grass, that a deer eat and, as it treads on the ground, it lifts the earth and moves the worms below, a few centimetres lower, which helps fungus to produce soils over it by breaking down the organic matter of the dead deer and the faded plant.

Landscape forms when plate tectonics diverge a few hundred kilometres underground, causing groundwater to flow out of the though left by the gap itself, pushing the rising and folding soils a few hundred kilometres further before their tops erode and their sediments flow into the river created by the same movement.

Landscape forms when forgotten hydrocarbons spill underground where bacteria transfer them in nutrients for the plants, who grow and crack the slabs and walls of the industries that formerly housed the tanks, which they mycorrhize and erode with fungi that will feed new plants, that will attract the bees and their berries the birds, and their shadow the humans.

"Weathering Rinds" original poem by Jérôme Gaillardet

One million year ago, I fell to the ground

With violence,

Spat from the mouth of a volcano.

I am debris, an ejection of Vulcan.

Slowly, I have been cooling

Resting in the wetness of a landscape

that buried me.

I gently decomposed.

The grey of my core turning into yellow

I weakened and lost some part of me.

I became dust,

I became void,

Colonized by living shadows

That dissolved me for their survival,

But also protected me

From the acidity of the soil

From the agression of air and rain.

Water works to consume me

Taking my elements away

To deeper waters below

To the river nearby

And to the trees above that I feed.

Dust of Vulcan, Helios gave me the power

To give birth and maintain life.

But also to resist the vanishing of time.

One hundred thousand years

To create this weathering rind

That is surrounding me:

This critical zone feeding Gaia.

with nutrients and salts.

Now humans have excavated me

From this quarry where I rested.

Stopping the metamorphosis

That keeps their planet habitable,

The conquering Life.

Forgetting that my death is Life.

Dust of Vulcan, Son of Helios

In a million years, I will have vanished

Buried in the sediments of an ocean

Should there still be humans on the planet

Would they remember that my dust is their blood.

Text written by Bruno Latour for “Cosmologies”

1- A cosmos, a circle, cycle of cycles, inside which all nations enclosed, a cosmos giving birth to them, a cosmos out of which they had drawn the face of their gods, inward, inward!

2- A planet is hurtling alone in infinite space, a cosmos no more, dispersed are the nations, blinded and birthless seeking to give a face to their absent divinities, forward, forward!

3- Inside, back to earth, locked down, terrified at first, elated to learn how to live inside a cosmos again, no familiar face of gods but tucked inside cycles of cycles nations relearn how to give birth, with, with!