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traveling strata

2023

installation

Photo: takehiro iikawa

From the 1960s to the 2000s, a new city was built in Kobe by eviscerating mountains for landfill carried on belt conveyors and container ships. Called "mountain goes to sea" it was the largest project of its kind for in its time. As the artificial islands were completed this Anthropocene inversion resulted in the area around Suma, one of the islands, becoming world-famous for plant fossil specimens from about 35 million years ago. As the old soil was layered on top of new soil, the order of strata was reversed. Investigating this extremely peculiar variation of strata, this work visualizes the strata created by humans and the act of construction and development by humans. Sand and crushed plastic intermittently fall from the whiteboards of the temporary construction enclosure. Sand and plastic are deposited and new strata are formed. A book of my research was also exhibited.