Pirties Dūmai (Smoke Sauna)
Jones, Lucy (2016) Pirties Dūmai (Smoke Sauna). [Film, Performance, Photography]
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LT Ranch Space, is a non-profit rural art space in Lithuania hosting seasonal student sessions, providing a facility for research, experimentation and cultural events related to art, architecture, film and landscape. The Ranch has been running Summer Sessions with UCA, UAL, UW students and practitioners from a diverse range of disciplines since 2009.
The artwork made was a part of the 2016 summer session. I was teaching staff, along with three others, and three of us made pieces alongside the help we gave to the students.
My piece was a performance, a made outcome in predominantly metal and stone, two digital film pieces and some still photography.
The work explored the materiality and function of the traditional smoke sauna building on the ranch site. The sauna sits apart from the active centre of the ranch, separated by trees in its quiet nook in the landscape. The space is not currently used as a sauna and the original large granite stones which made up the original floor are gathered outside the small building.
When sauna would be used, historically, smoke would be built up inside the sauna and then released through a hatch in the roof when the sauna building contained an atmosphere hot enough to use as a sauna.
The first film piece explores the preparation of the sauna for use with a wide angle film washing one of the large boulders from the old floor outside the building. The film is deliberately wide angle, taking in the activity, performed by myself, the building and the wider open space.
The second investigation attempts to explore the materiality of the sauna through a made piece, the function of which was to produce a smoke signal in the landscape of the ranch marking the way in which the smoke would periodically appear when the sauna building was in use, and the relationship between the preparation of this particularly intense interior environment and the wider landscape.
Again using the floor stones outside the building, a tiny, fragile hearth was made using a base of stone and thick steel rebar embedded in the stone which held up a fine metal gauze. The stone-rebar detail mimicked a similar detail being executed on the other side of the site, in the construction of a built structure for storing wood. The smoke signal was produced by making very hot, pure, charcoal on the main outdoor fire pit on the site, transferring this to the metal gauze and covering this with birch bark chips harvested onsite. The birch is the predominant timber in the region and the bark contains lots of resins which produce a thick white smoke when burnt. The hearth itself was surrounded by fresh chips and dried birch leaves from the beating bunches used during the sauna process to stimulate the circulation.
The performance of producing the smoke signal in the space was recorded through film, again in wide angle shot to engage the building and the wider landscape. In particular, the ambient sounds were included which emphasized the relationship of this slightly detached quiet space to the more more actively noisy ranch spaces elsewhere.
Closer still photography and smaller films recorded the hearth at close range, to record the spectrum of materiality which followed that of the interior space of the sauna, in preparation and use.
The catalogue featured a written piece, stills from the films and some photography.
Published in catalogue: https://issuu.com/lt_ranch_space/docs/ltranchsummersessions2016
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