As part of my residency at the Ola Sendstad farm, I decided to carry out a peculiar investigation: an exercise involving listening, contemplation and integration into the rural environment. The initial plan: to build a rural library, a project promoted by the collective The Union, with the aim of generating a heterogeneous collection of books, references and alternative materials that would allow reflection and activate critical thinking about rural life.

Libraries keep people’s memories, contain moments, impulses, curiosities and fields of knowledge. Hence, we think of a device capable of generating a record of experiences through readings, conversations and exchange of experiences.

My time at the residency was driven by this project. Since my experience of rural life was only given by and through literature, I set out to list books that somehow connected me to the impression I had when I first visited the farm. Books are a way to connect, to build bridges, to mediate. Through them we can share experiences, memories and knowledge.

Placing the body in the field, walking in the soil,
breathing the air of the forest, observing the rhythm and movement of the daily work of a farm was a unique experience, full of new information that I believe can be accessed only through physical experience.

The body and its contact with nature builds knowledge.
My stay at the farm was an immense encouragement that opened up new concerns and interests to develop: to continue with the idea of the rural library project and to add a new challenge, the writing of a book that through the history of the Sendstad farm reflects on the idea of time. Time as a dimension to be explored in its conceptual, poetic and political aspects.

I intend to write a book based on the experience of the body, of the senses, of muddy boots, of the time of animals, of the dirt road, the seasons, the colours and the idea of cycles as material marks that organise time.

This text is a first writing exercise. It emerges as a result of my residency, of long conversations with Ola, of my interest in his work and his formal explorations. These words, fragmented, in the process of writing and developing ideas, are intended to share some thoughts resulting from the writing exercises carried out during the residency, based on the list of books I proposed. At the same time, as an expanded dialogue, to accompany Ola’s work Experiences from birch ­production through some reflections on the observation of his work process and the relationship between his artistic explorations and his work on the farm.

Collaboration is an exercise of construction.

TIME
El discurso vacío / The empty discourse, 1996. Mario Levrero (Uruguay)
La novela luminosa / The luminous novel, 2005. Mario Levrero (Uruguay)

Marío Levrero is one of my favourite writers. My list begins with these two novels, which to my mind reflect the vital experience of writing. A writer starts a notebook with exercises to improve his hand­writing in the conviction that by improving it he will also improve his character. A physical exercise that illuminates and speaks to us of the fear of death, love, old age, poetry and the nature of fiction.

I intend to expand her gesture, and to exercise my writing during my stay in the residence. An exercise accompanied by walks, conversations and explorations on the farm. It all adds up, to look, to apprehend and to put it down on paper. Even if they are single words. Writing as an act to dimension time.

I do it in handwriting and cursive to rehearse time unfolded in a chained drawing. Calligraphy needs its own time, the curves, the straight lines, the links. Clarity comes from calmness.

There is another time I observe: the farm time.

Time spent on work and daily tasks that require ­discipline.

Time spent working with birch wood, a material with great qualities that needs a longer working process. Recovering the quality of the material rather than ­improving productivity.

Time spent caring for the sheep. They have just been born, they need to learn, feed and become strong. Care in processing, land and pasture use. More time ­dedicated, better quality of life.

Time in listening and observation. Animals move at their own rhythm. The little ones learn, they try to copy the movements of their mothers. Respect for this learning. Everything comes in its own time.

I want the book to talk about time as a mark, as a rhythm, as tangible matter, as a possibility, as an enclosure, as a structure, as a framework.

Time conditions form.
Time marks the cycles.
Cycles are pure wisdom.

CYCLE
Woldgate Woods, 2006. David Hockney (UK)

Of the weather. Of the seasons. Of life. Of traditions.
A birch forest. Just like the ones I know in Patagonia. Norway and southern Argentina are like distant relatives. In 2017 I was on a trip to Tierra del Fuego. I love its English translation: Land of Fire. Land of orange sunsets and birch forest.
The farm reminds me of that trip.
Behind the house, past a gate is the birch forest. It is beautiful. From afar you can see the light on the overlapping trunks, tall, skinny, fragile but strong.
Some fallen, crossing the road.
At night they have a different colour.
The grey of the trunks looks like silver. The light makes beautiful things.
In the sun they shine, as if generating a glow.
Tierra del fuego and Hockney’s paintings.
From a distance they look the same, they form a ­homogeneous weave. They are vertical lines that draw inverted lines. Close up they have relief, specific shapes, marks of time, of animals, of other critters that live there and mould them again.
Old trees.
Dead trees.
Young trees.
The rhythm of the forest is the rhythm of the farm. Of work. Of the family.
The cycle is gentle, it is caring, it is kind.
I think it is also just.

Observation of the process:
the forest
careful harvesting
awareness in the use of wood
the cuts
respect for the form
the dedication in the use of technologies
the complex dimension of time at every step
the contact with the materials
the construction
How do we intervene in nature?
Is art a way of doing this?

I am sure that for Ola it is, his pieces exhibited also ­accompany the cycle.

MATERIAL
Desarticulaciones / Disarticulations, 2010. Sylvia Molloy (Argentina)

The forest draws a shape. From afar, the series. From close up, the particular. It could be a way of ­visualising the use of time: at higher speed, the production, the construction of a homogeneous form; at lower speed the detail, the pause, the attentive observation.

Ola told me something that still echoes in me. The forest is an ecosystem, a space from which the materials to build (houses, furniture, papers) emerge and a place that is also built. Intervening in the cycles of the forest is a form of construction.

The process of harvesting the trees depends on many factors, there on the farm, they respect the life span of the trees. There is a life cycle, which could be measured with the life of an adult, and it is this time that dictates the moment to plant the trees, the moment to cut them down, paying close attention to the place and the consequences for the land and the environment.

Then the use of the wood and the sawing.

The most regular trunks are the most suitable for the serial sawn timber and the most classical construction: wooden slats, geometrical and polished.
The procedure for their sawing is through a machine that regulates, standardises and makes it efficient.

Is it possible to work with the shape offered by trees? Those that break the pattern, those that bring new ­drawings, those that present difficulties for seriality.

Ola explores these forms, the sawing workshop is a kind of laboratory. He works in series for what is strictly necessary, but he investigates the forms brought by the materials, in this case birch. He pays attention to the curves, the reliefs, the patterns that the wood brings and explores ways of working with other patterns.

Instead of adapting the form to the machine, Ola makes the machine adapt to the form.

CONSTRUCTION
El ruido del trueno / A Sound of Thunder, 1952. Ray Bradbury (USA)

As a child I remember this story by Ray Bradbury. On embarking on a journey through time, travellers are warned to take care of everything they encounter in the past, as the slightest change can cause major alterations in the future. They can only kill or intervene if they find themselves in an extremely dangerous situation. Of course the story progresses and the journey is not acetic, the travellers step on the earth, shoot an animal and step on a butterfly. The future-present is conditioned by this episode.

The paradox of time travel brings the conclusion that in order to survive, one must always intervene in the environment: start a fire, find a roof over one’s head, provide food. In a context of ecological and climatic emergency, it is central to ask ourselves how? How to be in the world intervening but not burdening every step we take, delineating an increasingly complicated future.

I always have the fantasy of going to “nature”, as if that place were a kind of blank page, a place without ­contamination. There is no such degree zero, just as there is no such degree zero in writing. To write is to move, to construct meaning or to dismantle it, but never without intervention. The slightest movement intervenes, on paper, in the support, with the meaning it provokes. There is no such thing as an abstract, objective, oily, context-free idea of nature. It is like the idea of the white cube in art, a neutral space, without context, without external contamination, that lets you see something in its essence.

Nature is a constant movement. It is necessary to intervene in order to survive.
I discovered this as an adult.
There is no pure state.
Intervention is necessary.

What I see on the farm is careful. Intervention is loving and careful. It is with respect for every corner, animal, plant. To build, to respect the form, to try to move to the natural rhythm of things, to accompany.
They let the processes go through their cycles.
Giving them time.

MEETING
Of Walking in Ice. Werner Herzog (Germany) 1978

In the winter of 1974, Werner Herzog made a three week solo journey from Munich to Paris on foot. He believed it was the only way his close friend, film historian Lotte Eisner, would survive a sickness. During this journey through ice, Herzog documented everything he saw and felt with intense sincerity.
Walking to the encounter.
Walking as a ritual act.
Walking on ice.
To pay attention to breathing, to the needs of the body, to the shoes and clothes needed to survive the cold.
Walking as a mantra, to bring in other ideas, to make time a different experience.

During my stay at the farm I walked every day with Ola, with Lone, and alone.
I walked together with the animals, a bunch of sheep and a motherless little one who stayed in a pen and was being looked after in a different way. Always taken care of and looked after.

To walk is to move. It is to generate a journey that can be measured over time.
To go to meet a material.
Walking to see, to listen, to read something of the ­environment.
To talk with Ola, to look at the logs, the trees, the details of each surface.
To touch the materials, the animals, the earth.
To walk to the rhythm of the farm. As a way of meeting, as a listening exercise, as a way of learning.
To encounter the unique form, the flaw, the leap from the norm.
To open the processes, to share them with those who want to get to know it.

Share the experience of time as a form of exploration.