Granite Illusion

14.12.2022 1 Like 0 kommenttia Samir Bhowmik

Frank Brümmel reflects on the weathering processes of stone under increased environmental pressures and climate change.

Frank Brümmel

…in truth, all stone weathering is stone disease. No stone resists the action of atmospheric agencies indefinitely: otherwise, we would have no sediments, no soil, no natural sculpture…—Adrian Stokes, The Pleasures of Limestone, 1934 [1]

In Finland and especially in the capital region of Helsinki the used natural stone material for buildings and other stone-built structures are granite and similar plutonite. These stones have a much higher resistance towards environmental pollution than other stone-materials, like lime- and sandstone. Patterns of impact and damage in these stone-built heritages are for the non-trained eye not easy to spot, if even visible. 

In other places all around the world, in which stone building material is sandstone or limestone, impacts as occurred by acid rain caused by diverse emissions, visibly damaged stone buildings and structures already in the beginning of the 20^th century and especially got visible in the second half of the 20^th century. Since the end of the 1950s and strongly in the 1970s it became clear that acid rain was not any more a locally singular limited phenomena, but could be observed for example, all over Europe. [2]

Even though people reacted to the fact, that their stone-built cultural heritage was washed away in front of their eyes, the impact on forests and seas dominated the discussion at the time, as it does now again.

Today experts all over the planet try to understand physical weathering processes on stone under increased environmental pressures and the climate change. And for this the idea and methods of what readability of stones can be, has expanded. In a discussion with Katrin Wilhelm, researcher at the School of Geography and the Environment at the University of Oxford, I hear the first time of ICP-MS devices. [3]

Wilhelm refers to stratigraphy and points out, that trace metal analysis of the stone will show a history, an archive of sometimes centuries of environmental pollution.

The stone is therefor a record carrier for historical environmental impact.

Susan Schuppli writes that Material Witnesses are nonhuman entities and machinic ecologies, [4] which archive their complex interaction with the world and operate as double agents, who harbor direct evidence of events as well as providing the circumstantial evidence. 

Before studying art, my first vocation was that of a stonemason. For several years I worked in Ger­many in the field of restauration and conversation of old stone buildings, castles, churches, town-walls and other types of buildings and structures. In the city of Nuremberg (Bavaria Germany) where I lived and worked, the local and historically mined building material was sandstone. From the Early Middle Ages over the Gothic Period till today sandstone has been the local mate­rial of choice. Sandstone, as for limestone, reacts sensitively to any harmful environmental conditions. The stone´s outside layers simply crumble away, creating typical patterns of damage, that conservators and craftspeople are confronted with. Nothing like this can be seen at stone-built structures in Helsinki.

My question is therefore, has the contamination of the material been though happening here in Finland like in other countries? And what does it do to people who cannot see, cannot sense these impacts as the built environment lulls them into an illusion of not being vulnerable?

I speculate, that the in a way now superficially viewed intactness of the stone-built environment in Helsinki shields the by passer from a possibly hidden reality that might have accumulated in the stones themselves. This intactness shields and pleases the eyes, while making one blind. That what could be discovered, could be seen, happens somewhere else, is in delay. This granite illusion in Finland keeps up with its manner of strength, reliability and endurance. Even the Finnish parliament building is built out of this material. But is the stone material really so untouchable, isn´t it contaminated, hasn´t it stored a memory in a way of a proxy archive? [5] And doesn´t it therefore distracts from what is happening elsewhere, where impacts and damages are more visible? 

I am writing this all in the awareness of being turned away from the nostalgic European gaze upon stone-built sides, especially ruins, [6]and see ruins, or decay in stone-built structures as a rather speculative array.[7]

In a call with researcher and conservator Elisa Heikkilä from the Finnish Heritage Agency I find out that because of the hard persistence of the local building materials, stone conservation science in regards for stone-structures has not been broadly developed and is therefore not so established in Finland. In opposite to even already neighbouring countries like Sweden, in which for example limestone and sandstone buildings are more common. According to Heikkilä in the 1970s in Helsinki was a vast usage of sandblasting of the surfaces of stone-structures in order to clean the dirt, crust of the surface. In this unfortunate non-reversible process, big amounts of especially the so common Jugendstil and Nordic Classicism building´s precious stone surfaces were damaged. To the extent of erasing important details and traces of handicrafts stonemasonry.

With some exceptions still showing damages from war times, which are physical damages. 

Head of the research program of Geology and Geophysics Christoph Beier at the Department of Geosciences and Geography of the University of Helsinki shows me in one of the laboratories a Laser Ablation ICP-MS device. We discuss, how it would be possible to find out on my question.

Beier points out, that if their research team gets involved in such research, doing these analyses, than usually they perform them with the goal of a scientific publication. Especially in regards for lengthy and costly analysis as with the LA-ICP-MS device. Beier suggests therefore, that for a first step, I could collect different sample materials of buildings in Helsinki. Important is a constant, for example the same material from different buildings out of different time periods. Then so-called thin sections can be done and put under the microscope. Especially in granite certain minerals will show certain patterns. And if these microscopic minerally patterns indicate into a certain compositional change, further research might be of real interest, including more sophisticated methods and devices.

In my own artistic practice I have been working with stone text plates. Inscriptions, words and ornaments carved in stone. Making kind of fictional archaeological artifacts. With the question, that I am asking here and the different modes of inscriptions, that have been evolved, as for example seeing contamination as a form of inscription, come further questions.

How to re-think therefor inscription in stone? And how to re-find in a way another archival status as visual media in regards of readability of the various layers of inscriptions in stone? [8]

The illusion of archiving information in an assumingly eternal material by carving, could therefore be grounded by an understanding of value of another whilst unintended but evidential readability in something like contamination or the decay of the exact same material. 

Notes

1. Brian Dillon, Ruins (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press / Whitechapel Gallery, 2011), 25.
2. ‘Saurer Regen – Entstehung, Auswirkungen, Gegenmaßnahmen’, accessed 1 December 2022, http://daten.didaktikchemie.uni-bayreuth.de/umat/saurer_regen/archiv/saurer_regen.htm.
3. Inductively coupled plasma mass spectroscopy (ICP-MS) is an analytical technique for determining trace multi-elemental and isotopic concentrations in liquid, solid, or gaseous samples.
4. Susan Schuppli, Material Witness (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2020), 3.
5. Katrin Wilhelm et al., ‘Stone-Built Heritage as a Proxy Archive for Long-Term Historical Air Quality: A Study of Weathering Crusts on Three Generations of Stone Sculptures on Broad Street, Oxford’, Science of The Total Environment 759 (10 March 2021): 143916, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2020.143916.
6. Ann Laura Stoler, Imperial Debris On Ruins and Ruination (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2013)
7. Brian Dillon, Ruins (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press / Whitechapel Gallery, 2011)
8. See Jussi Parikka on Roger Caillois´s Writing of Stones: Jussi Parikka, Electronic Mediations, Volume 46: Geology of Media (Minneapolis, UNITED STATES: University of Minnesota Press, 2015), 62. http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uahelsinki/detail.action?docID=1983521.

Artist Bio: I am an artist and educator with a background as stonemason. Currently I am Lecturer in Sculpture at the Academy of Fine Arts, University of the Arts Helsinki where I also do Doctoral studies as a doctoral candidate. I make fictive future stone artifacts, stone text plates with inscriptions. And I do artistic research on the question of a possible educational element in sculpture. My works have been shown nationally and internationally.  www.frankbrummel.com