Just before going back to our car, I notice the plants' shadows on the ground, oscillating in the wind like a constant drawing made on the earth. I want to catch this moment, but my drawing materials are already packed in the car. By the time I go and come back with my pencils, a huge cloud covers the whole field. The sun is gone, and the shadows with it. I can tell it will take at least 20 minutes to half an hour to see the sun again, the massive cloud moving very slowly.
After 25 minutes, the sun is shining on top of us again. I grab the paper and pencils and kneel down by different plants, holding my paper firmly while trying to catch a plant's shadow and follow its trace with my pencil. But it is very windy, and the plant I am drawing moves constantly, and so does its shadow. Sometimes a cloud covers the sun and the shadow fades slowly, so I wait for another moment. Following the shadow with my pencil is also challenging because the paper, my drawing plane, is not stable in my hand. At every touch of the pencil, the weight of my hand makes the paper bend, and the shadow runs away, the plants oscillate, clouds cover the sun, shadows fade, and I wait for another moment. It is a site-specific drawing: it holds a record of this place's wind, sun, and plant movement on 18.09.26 from 12:30 to 12:50. The site’s specific conditions were the primary elements shaping this drawing experience.
The position of the sun and clouds forced me to wait, requiring my practice to slow down. This process of waiting changed my awareness of the surroundings. We were in a vast area where there seemed to be no one but us and the birds. Waiting for the movement of one particular immense cloud led me to wonder what kinds of birds were present there. It also brought strange thoughts about birds to mind: the apparent impossibility of encountering an entirely new bird species today, since each species has its own distinctive song and so many of these songs have already been recorded by people. The idea that human beings may have reached, observed, and documented every part of the world feels uncanny. This feeling became especially strong near the massive sinkhole, which formed thousands of years ago and seemed to belong more to the birds than to people. Their songs resembled human whistling, creating an uncomfortable sense that someone was repeatedly calling to us from across the landscape.