Materializing as a photographic film with a quadraphonic sound composition, “shells” weaves sound, images, and text to retrace the deep history of limestone — from its marine origins to its present-day extraction as the raw material for concrete. At its core is a soundscape composed entirely of field recordings made in various environments, including a limestone quarry and a cement factory. The sounds and images set in counterpoint the living voices inhabiting the earth with the industrial, mechanical processes that transform it. The work addresses how ancient marine skeletons and shells become the concrete foundations of our cities and infrastructures. In doing so, it exposes the ecological violence of concrete: the covering of landscapes, the sealing of surfaces, the destruction of habitats, and the rendering of the earth impermeable. With hints of magic realism, "shells" denounces the artificialization of soils, while giving life to sediments eager to reclaim their land.

In “shells” the calcareous bodies of marine invertebrates harden into limestone. Soils turn permeable, creating networks of aquifers, oceans within. Until gapping holes begin to form, dug by the factory, hungry for limestone. The factory crushes the world into powder to cover it with concrete, bringing the Earth into artificiality. Embodying capitalism and its never-ending thirst for growth, the factory ends up consuming the world — until sediments begin to move. In a geological time bookend, sediments bury the factory deep into the lithosphere, reducing it to a stratum, while the world above recovers its porosity.

> "shells" was realised during a three-week residency at the Bridderhaus (LU) following an invitation by d-o-t-s (Laura Drouet & Olivier Lacrouts) in the frame of the project "Earthbound. Worms, Soil, Decay".


> please get in touch if you’d like a private viewing link. 

> direction, photographs, sounds, and editing: Pablo Diserens
> archival drawings: “on the disposition of iron in variegated strate” by George Maw (1868)
> produced by Bridderhaus (LU)

> Special thanks to Valérie Tholl, Remo Bei, Andjela Jankovic, d-o-t-s (Laura Drouet & Olivier Lacrouts), Félix Blume, Yannick Dauby, Madelyn Byrd, and all the animals and geologies who have lent me their ‘voices’.

> viewing with headphones or speakers recommended