DIG A LITTLE DEEPER
The artwork was exhibited at the group show [REVERBERATED] - Following the movement of memory, Angewandte Interdisplinary Lab, AIL
2026
Credit: Lea Fabienne
Credit: Lea Fabienne
Credit: Lea Fabienne
Credit: Lea Fabienne
Credit: Lea Fabienne
Dig a Little Deeper is an installation on the space between material evidence and its interpretation, where only partial traces become visible. Inspired by xenoliths, geological fragments that carry material from the Earth’s mantle, the work presents two plastic-cast stones containing internal projections. The footage dissolves into diffuse light, never resolving, as the stones block its transmission. As synthetic formations, they are both geological evidence and simulation, capturing and obscuring
the information they contain. Framing research and memory as processes built from fragments, where meaning flickers but is never fully in clear view.
This tension of translation extends into the use of synthetic materials. The epoxy stones mimic geological forms while remaining distinctly artificial. They exist in parallel to the xenolith since they both are constructed as carriers of meaning, both positioned between authenticity and fabrication, both implicated in processes of interpretation. The work seeks to serve as both geological evidence and a human-made simulation, without fully separating the two.
The title, Dig a Little Deeper, gestures toward geological excavation but also toward introspection, as if meaning, memory, or truth might reside beneath the surface, awaiting retrieval. Yet it resists fulfilling this promise. Digging deeper does not necessarily yield clarity; it may instead produce further obscurity, further layers of unreadability.
The installation was thought of as a reflection on research itself. It engages with the conditions under which knowledge is produced, the reliance on fragments, the interpretation of incomplete data, and the construction of narratives around what cannot be fully known. The glowing stones become speculative archives; they are objects that suggest the presence of information while withholding its content.
Memory operates here not as something stable or retrievable, but as something embedded, partial, and resistant. Just as the Earth retains traces
of its own formation in inaccessible depths, the work proposes that both geological and human histories are structured by what cannot be fully understood.