OVERWRITING
The memory of the salt lake is a visualization of a temporal regime, a cyclical logic reflecting the Mediterranean landscape, where light, heat, evaporation, and salinity constantly rewrite surfaces.
Unlike Northern European or continental traditions of accumulation and monumentality, Mediterranean time operates through cycles: agricultural, tidal, seasonal. Salt lakes crystallize and dissolve. Ancient monuments are built, buried, excavated, reburied.
I propose to investigate Mediterranean memory as an autonomous system — not as content or narrative, but as infrastructure that continues to function independently of human presence. The project unfolds at the intersection of material and digital layers, revealing differences between human and natural ways of preserving, losing, and rewriting.
I work with a multi-year time series of satellite images of the Larnaca Salt Lake (Cyprus), where the cycle of salt crystallization and dissolution represents a natural algorithm, a process that does not accumulate history but continuously resets it.
I project video onto a ceramic grid structure. The ceramic grid fixes form permanently. Clay stabilized by firing becomes irreversible matter, embodying human memory's attempt to preserve. In the projection layer, salt ceases to be an object and becomes time: a slow cycle of appearance and disappearance unfolding over the ceramic form.
The work does not follow calendar time. It exists in a mode of repetition where each beginning cancels the previous one.
The work does not follow calendar time. It exists in a mode of repetition where each beginning cancels the previous one.
The project proposes viewing the Mediterranean not as a space of preserved memory, but as an environment where each day begins through erasure.
MEMORY AS INFRASTRACTURE
Concept
The project examines the moment when what was initially conceived as a form of care for human experience ceases to function as a relationship between people and transforms into a self-sustaining system of preservation — an autonomous infrastructure capable of operating without human participation, dialogue, or personal responsibility.
Three Modes of Memory
Human Memory: Compression and Voids
The past is not retained as a smooth fabric but contracts around accessible zones and transforms into a compressed version. Ceramics, having undergone firing, becomes irreversible — the original no longer exists.
The past is not retained as a smooth fabric but contracts around accessible zones and transforms into a compressed version. Ceramics, having undergone firing, becomes irreversible — the original no longer exists.
Natural Memory: Continuous Overwriting
Salt not as object, but as time acting upon form. Each day of the salt lake completely cancels the previous one. The cycle of salt crystallization and dissolution represents an autonomous surface-rewriting system.
Algorithmic Memory: Mutation and Generalization.
When the unique dissolves into collective machine memory. The system does not repeat but creates its own versions. The private becomes part of a generalized pattern.
Clay and salt are both products of Mediterranean geology:: materials shaped by heat, water, time.
The work positions ceramic practice within its natural context — not only as craft tradition but as material thinking emerging from place
The work positions ceramic practice within its natural context — not only as craft tradition but as material thinking emerging from place
CORE IDEA
To show that there exists memory that does not belong to us. Memory as process without archive. Conflict between human logic of stabilization and natural logic, where any state is temporary and holds no privilege over the previous one.
I create a situation in which time acts upon form, and overwriting occurs without human participation.
Technical Approach
& Conceptual Innovation
& Conceptual Innovation
- Overwrite extends ceramic practice into the realm of temporal media. The ceramic grid is not a container for projection — it is a dialogic surface when permanent material (fired clay) meets ephemeral process (projected dissolution)
- This tension mirrors the human condition in the Mediterranean: the desire to fix (monuments, archives, traditions) against the reality of continuous transformation (erosion, migration, cultural exchange).
- The satellite imagery is not documentary but conceptual material. Each frame has identical resolution, creating a uniform temporal sequence without narrative hierarchy. The system operates without human interpretation as an autonomous process that the artwork exposes rather than controls.
Larnaca Salt Lake
Geography and Context
Larnaca Salt Lake is one of the largest salt lakes in Cyprus, located near the city of Larnaca. This is not a remote nature — it is part of the everyday landscape, visible from the highway, crossed by migrating birds, subject to the same cycles of light and heat that structure island life.
Natural Algorithm
The lake operates as an autonomous memory system:
Geography and Context
Larnaca Salt Lake is one of the largest salt lakes in Cyprus, located near the city of Larnaca. This is not a remote nature — it is part of the everyday landscape, visible from the highway, crossed by migrating birds, subject to the same cycles of light and heat that structure island life.
Natural Algorithm
The lake operates as an autonomous memory system:
- Winter: fills with rainwater
- Spring: gradual evaporation, beginning of crystallization
- Summer: complete drying, white salt crust
- Autumn: first rains, salt dissolution, return to green
CYPRUS CONNECTION
Cyprus is not a geographical coincidence but a conceptual necessity for this work.
Living on an island where isolation, autonomy, and closed systems are lived realities rather than metaphors has shaped my understanding of how memory functions in bounded environments.
The salt lake in Larnaca is not a remote research subject. It is part of the daily landscape, visible from the highway, crossed by migrating birds, subject to the same cycles of light and heat that structure island life.
The Mediterranean condition, where ancient and modern, preservation and transformation, permanence and dissolution coexist without resolution, forms the foundation of my practice. This work could not have been conceived anywhere else.
Cyprus is not a geographical coincidence but a conceptual necessity for this work.
Living on an island where isolation, autonomy, and closed systems are lived realities rather than metaphors has shaped my understanding of how memory functions in bounded environments.
The salt lake in Larnaca is not a remote research subject. It is part of the daily landscape, visible from the highway, crossed by migrating birds, subject to the same cycles of light and heat that structure island life.
The Mediterranean condition, where ancient and modern, preservation and transformation, permanence and dissolution coexist without resolution, forms the foundation of my practice. This work could not have been conceived anywhere else.
Contacts
sb_privately@yahoo.com
Telegram: @svetlanafenster
Instagram: svetlana_fenster_art
Website – ivanfenster@yandex.ru
Telegram: @svetlanafenster
Instagram: svetlana_fenster_art
Website – ivanfenster@yandex.ru
Contacts
sb_privately@yahoo.com
Telegram: @svetlanafenster
Instagram: svetlana_fenster_art
Website – ivanfenster@yandex.ru
Telegram: @svetlanafenster
Instagram: svetlana_fenster_art
Website – ivanfenster@yandex.ru