The word cosmetics (which we all know as a noun denoting the art of beautifying the body) derives from the Greek "kosmos", meaning amongst others "order", "arrangement", "ornament" or "adornment". The search for order and beauty in the molecular cosmos of calcium compounds intersects with the physicality and material properties of marble, plaster, lime, cement and other calcite based formations. Our cosy cosmos is a romance based on a material ontology and a material consciousness that underline the poetic, creative moment of these minerals, their ability to transform both themselves and us.
The cosy calcium cosmos romance is an approved entanglement of scientific knowledge with aesthetic deviances. Science explains that calcium is a metal (actually it is the most abundant and vital metal in animals, including humans). It also shows that calcium is leaves, bones, teeth, shells, kidney stones, rocks, soil… Calcium is a vital organ of the Earth crust. It is core matter to raw matter. It is ubiquitous and in constant cycle. A telluric pulse, a vehicle for life, dead and alive, dissolved and coagulated. Science also tells us that calcium is a primordial nuclide that exists between us and other galaxies. It is an interstellar substance, one of the main rock forming elements that was present in cosmos long before our solar system was formed. Calcium is steel and concrete, architecture and agriculture; it is disease and it is cure, it is poison and antidote. Calcium is a fossil of eternal warfare, a trace of existence, it is last and lost transmission. Our instinct guides us to feel calcium as a hidden element of energy and a dormant deposit of growing, a lead under the surface and over the edge, the state of crystalized past and future, order and chaos, beauty and cosmetics. Our lust for calcium feeds our libido of lithosphere, hydrosphere and biosphere exploitation. Calcium is love, politics, economy and ecology. Then we see calcium hacked by lime, plaster, pigments, marble and transmuted into art. Sometimes it is digested into soft matter that remembers shapes (plaster, cement), or it is petrified into brittle condensation which withstand contouring (marble, limestone, alabaster…). Often it disintegrates into exaggerated extensions (pigments, stabilizers, fertilizers, preservatives, coagulants, supplements). Calcium feels either like indifferent matter or like a promising zygote. It tests out the logic of an ethics of being in which the living-non-living or human-non-human binaries might no longer apply. It can be absolute existence, absolute motion, absolute syntax, absolute cosmos, inorganic and organic, stone and flesh, blood and water. It oscillates between ancient geology and new technology. Calcium seems out of time, out of place, out if this world, out of shape, out of shell, out of mind.
The project was supported using public funding by Slovak Arts Council.
