I chose this location because of the adjacent installations by Marisa Caichiolo. Branches protruding out
of the burned-charcoal black houses and from the suspended garment-column touched the same patched concrete floor where I would dump this illegal New Zealand clay-rubble.
Her branches serve
as root-like connectors to the ground.
My performance is a temporary transgression.
How is earth or clay legal or illegal? I label it illegal because it was dumped into our trees. It clogged
their roots, and I transported some of it here. I bagged it in repurposed porridge bags but the spoil is
rock and clay. Not nutritious for a cactus nor our native manuka tree, the first species to regenerate on
cleared land.
For this performance I shifted the focus of the cleaning to others. I guided them, giving
them tools to use but they did the remedial work to package this spoil into repurposed bags for others to
take samples home. Illegal spoil was now divided up by these helpers who worked along side each
other to clean up the mess I had made on the floor.
I concluded the performance when the floor looked
clean by spreading a white cloth on the floor and lifting it slowly to show imprints of the residue.
While
dabbing the floor, I thought of St Veronica wiping the face of Christ. Cleaning, especially cleaning
pollutions, is a kind of sacrament.
