Workshop: Salty, 2024
by Katy Beinart, Alessio Mazzaro, Catherine Bertola and Sophie Williamson
18th September 2024, Aarduork, Venice
a workshop of artistic practices around salt by the Salt Research Network
Conceived within a discussion for a future collaboration with NICHE (the New Insitiaute for the Environmental Humaities at the Univerista Ca’ Foscari), the workshop was a moment of practice in which the members of the Salt Research Network (Katy Beinart, Catherine Bertola, Alessio Mazzaro, Sophie Williamson) shared the engagement of their practice with salt. The participants experimented with evaporation pans and crystallization, collected salt water, shared stories of salt history and explored the fragility and impossibility of building with salt.
The workshop started with a salt history walk led by Katy, followed by workshops led by Catherine and Alessio. We finished the day with a discussion prompted by a series of cards designed and written by Sophie.
With thanks to Alberto and Pietro at Aarduork and all at NICHE.
Discussion notes and images are below.
How does salt seep in and seep through bodies?
Immersion in the sea – being in a substance other than air
Ukbekistan – it becoming part of your body
Tears – compostion. Bodies as porous
Traditions – salt under the pillow. Salt over the shoulder.
Protective, purifying.
How does salt build kin, human and non-human?
Salt in electronic chips and batteries
Swimming – sharing the sea with fish – exchange – going through our bodies
Salt in food as a kind of relation
Kinship between people and the lagoon – imposed kinship
What does it mean to be salt?
Salt of the earth
Salty = stiff (Italian)
Sticking to things, forming bonds
Dissolving – reactive to the environment. Fluid.
Fixed/changing.
Migration and mobility
Universal and necessary
What is salt’s temporality? Does salt have a temporal plane?
Deep roots
No – it is constant
No beginning or end
Changes state
Immortal
Salt adapts to substances
What is visible/not visible
Is salt a community in itself or a tool to be used? Does it have its own agency?
It reacts with its environment – it has agency.
Rights – eg. Nature asking a question
Is salt asking us a question?
What is the question?
Not an entity like a river or a forest, not geographically bounded.
It necessitates (community) bonds in order to operate its needs
Bonds to other materials
It finds meaning through something – other non-humans
How does salt perceive organic and non-organic worlds?
Does it have a different composition in different states
It is both in amongst the organic and non-organic?
Is salt older than life?
Did it come before life?
It is part of cultural life – eg. Through the salt trade became part of lagnauge, education and culture
Does salt narrate? If so, how?
Geographically
Culturally
Chemistry
Does salt hold histories? Is it a vessel/conduit or an actor/agitator?
How it is part of culture
Part of wars – an agitator
Trade and money – an actor
How do we relate to it? Read it?
Different chemical languages – rock salt, sea salt, body salt
It needs to be translated
Taste
Salt in your body
Blood pressure
Smelling salts
Colds and sore throar medicine
Painful in cuts
Rubbing salt in the wound
