Works of Friction: A Reading and Heap Experiment

Project description from the EER website:

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​In June 2023, twenty-five people gathered at an empty private residence in Copenhagen for two days of collective experimentation and reflection. The garden, kitchen, and living and dining rooms came alive as workshop participants convened to explore, discuss, listen, stretch, dance, and eat.

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Based on her artwork-essay Cosa Bella Mortal: A Work of Friction (2023), artist and core EER member Elizabeth (Liz) McTernan led an exercise reflecting on the histories of heaps and angles of repose. In the EER group, we hold regular workshops to test relational methods. The heap experiment was designed in that spirit: After reading excerpts from her essay to the group, participants joined Liz outside for the pouring of heaps. In a quasi-ceremonial way, she poured various materials – sand, lichen, mulch, gravel, soil, and rice – onto different spots to form heaps and gave participants time to quietly reflect on and record their observations of the heap-making and -being. She then measured each heap with a makeshift angle-finder to record its specific ‘angle of repose’, the steepest angle at which a heap can remain stable and retain its heapness, which depends on the material and environment. During the experiment and the larger two-day workshop, friction within a heap became a form to describe the social and creative dynamics of the group when thinking and doing in collaboration: how participants from myriad fields come together, get caught on each other, re-individuate, and come together again in different configurations. Later on, Liz produced a large print based on the experiment, titled A Study of Heap Behaviour (2024).

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