TRANS(re)LATION, is an investigation into the meaning-making between place and affect. The starting point for this exploration is based on the French philosopher and psychoanalyst Julia Kristeva’s concept of the semiotic. For Kristeva, the semiotic is an emotional field, tied to instincts, dwelling in the cracks and prosodies (the rhythm, stress, and intonation of speech) of language, rather than in the actual meanings of words.

Over several years, I repeatedly visited the Arboretum in Almindingen on Bornholm, and walked the path around the largest of the lakes. An arboretum is a kind of wild-growing park that contains "a diversity of trees, bushes, lawns, a developed network of paths, and several small lakes," and which at least partially "exists for scientific study. The Arboretum in Almindingen was established in 1932 by the dendrology (the study of trees) enthusiast, forest ranger A.F. Valdemar Seier."

The path network around the lake has held special interest, as this place has served as an area from which I could (carto-)graph my inner states onto the outer geography. I have done this by selecting three (view-)-points around the lake, where the ground is rocky. Each place has had its coordinates recorded and then plotted. Each coordinate thus becomes both the basis for a picture (or a map) and, if the images are layered on top of one another, a triangle. The geometric movement from point, to line, to curve, and finally to circle, from two-dimensional to three-dimensional, is thus potentiated. These three points are each reflected in an existing object, paper, scissors, rock, amd wound or pierced by each coloured thread.

To my great delight, the poet and writer Peter Poulsen agreed to write a poem for the braille writing of this installation. The poem takes its starting point in his encounter with the rocks in the arboretum, which both, like the geography of emotions, become visible here and there by chance, and also lie as a kind of circular foundation beneath the lake. By acknowledging the rocks’ own nature, the stones find their own language. And so it has been for all time.

© Camilla Howalt