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 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 began by observing a multi-year sequence of satellite images of the Larnaca Salt Lake in Cyprus. In them, the cycle of salt crystallisation and dissolution appeared as a natural algorithm — a process that does not accumulate history but continuously resets it.
The research unfolds at the intersection of natural cycles and the human impulse to divide, fix, and preserve.
I look at natural cycles through a grid structure. The grid divides and fixes form, embodying the human attempt to hold memory within a stable system. Salt ceases to be an object and becomes time: a slow cycle of appearance and disappearance unfolding within the grid.
The cycles I observe do not follow calendar time. They exist in a mode of repetition where each new beginning cancels the previous one.
I look at natural cycles through a grid structure. The grid divides and fixes form, embodying the human attempt to hold memory within a stable system. Salt ceases to be an object and becomes time: a slow cycle of appearance and disappearance unfolding within the grid.
The cycles I observe do not follow calendar time. They exist in a mode of repetition where each new beginning cancels the previous one.
This observation led me to see the Mediterranean not only as a space of preserved memory, but also as an environment where each day can begin through erasure.
This observation led me to see the Mediterranean not only as a space of preserved memory, but also as an environment where each day can begin through erasure. From there, my attention moved beyond natural cycles towards human ways of preserving memory — through monuments, archives, and traditions.
MEMORY AS INFRASTRUCTURE
Concept
The research examines the moment when a structure of preservation, initially conceived as a form of care for human experience, ceases to function as a relationship between people and becomes self-sustaining — 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. The grid makes this logic visible — it divides continuity into fixed zones and leaves voids between them.
The past is not retained as a smooth fabric but contracts around accessible zones and transforms into a compressed version. The grid makes this logic visible — it divides continuity into fixed zones and leaves voids between them.
Natural Memory: Continuous Overwriting
Salt not as object, but as time acting upon form. Each day of the salt lake can 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.
Salt belongs to the Mediterranean landscape; the grid belongs to the human impulse to divide and preserve. Their encounter makes two different logics of time visible.
CORE IDEA
The core idea is that there exists memory that does not belong to us. Memory as process without archive. A conflict between human logic of stabilization and natural logic, where any state is temporary and holds no privilege over the previous one.
I am interested in the moment when time acts upon form and overwriting occurs without human participation.
Artistic Approach
- The grid is not a container for an image but a way of looking. Through a fixed structure, a natural process of appearance and dissolution becomes visible.
- This tension reflects what I observe in the Mediterranean: the desire to fix through monuments, archives, and traditions against continuous transformation through erosion, migration, and cultural exchange.
- The satellite imagery is not documentary but conceptual material. The repeated point of observation makes visible changes unfolding across a duration that cannot be held in everyday perception. It allows me to look at the lake not as a sequence of events but as a continuous temporal process.
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 research.
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 Larnaca Salt Lake is not a remote research subject but part of my everyday landscape.
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 research.
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 Larnaca Salt Lake is not a remote research subject but part of my everyday landscape.
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