Gallery 1 – Foyer Space
To maybe stir the edge of a hole’s hind leg
Rachel Schenberg
Volcanic sand found on the beaches of Puerto Viejo, on the Caribbean side of Costa Rica, has been used for its fine grain and magnetic properties. The sand is highly responsive. To magnets, kicks, wind, dogs digging holes and shitting. We approached some of Puerto Viejo’s shitting dogs and tried to sabotage them. The tour guide had explained that the dogs have evolved with magnetic tailbones that position their anus directly over the slipping magnetic sand at the centre of a hole. To maybe stir the edge of a hole’s hind leg we de-magnetised the beach. The first dog, his magnetic arse now irrelevant, tried to define somewhere to shit, lay down, contemplated at eye level the undulations of sand, the thousand dimpling gradients shifting in the wind, and looked further to the hardening and now softening line where the sea toyed with its own definition: felt constipated, then beached himself in the vast absence of edges, comatose. The second shitting dog did the same. Our Magnet-tour was cancelled for existential torture.
– M.S.G.
