» Human archaeological midden - Long Views: The Long Now Blog

Human archaeological midden

February 19th, 02009 by Alexander Rose - Twitter: @zander

Paul Saffo sent in a note about this sculpture he saw on his last trip to Germany. It reminds me of the pack rat middens archaeologists use to determine ancient climate, but made out of human relics:

While in Germany on Monday, I came across this rather remarkable sculpture by Maarten Venden Eynde. (pictured above, more about it here.)

As the artist describes it, Mo(NU)mentum is a “monument for the future, visualizing the impossibility to continue the current evolution”. And as a rather nice touch, the plastic champagne fluter which were used to serve champagne at the dedication were collected and melted into the top layer of the piece.

It is quite evocative in person, with the feel of a giant core through a vast stratigraphic column of civilization and the natural world. -p

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 19th, 02009 at 10:18 am and is filed under Long Term Art. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Stuart Candy

Cool sculpture.

I recognised the artist's name because of a project he did with Marjolijn Dijkman called The History of Tomorrow (02007).

Turns out Vanden Eynde has done quite a few other interesting and playful interventions, often commenting on humans' relationship to time, especially archaeological artifacts and rituals. His abiding thematic interest in what he called genetology -- the science of first things" -- entails asking questions including, "How will we look back to the past in the future? What will be left over?"

In this vein, check out Preservation of Ikea tea-cup (02005), Contemporary Cavedrawings (02007), Genetologic Research No. 3 (02003), and Rite for Almere (02008).