Sodium chloride (NaCl) is a salt that dissolves easily in water.
Silver chloride (AgCl), on the other hand, is almost insoluble.

When a salt dissolves in water, it splits into the free ions from which it is formed. Thus, sodium chloride splits into sodium ions and chlorine ions when kitchen salt dissolves in water in a pan.
The water in the pot will taste salty and is ready to receive the pasta, which will absorb the taste of the salt.

If you decide to salt the water really heavily before adding the pasta, you will, at some point, find that the salt will no longer dissolve.

Instead of dissolving, the salt begins to sink to the bottom of the pan as unaffected salt crystals.
A saturation point has been reached.

The saturation point is an expression that a balance has been achieved between the free ions and the ions that are bound in the salt crystals and have not split.

After the saturation point has occurred, the salt will settle as sediment, and the water is now unable to dissolve anymore salt. The salt will therefore sink to the bottom and, over time, sediment itself on the bottom of the pot.

Half a liter of water can dissolve 180 grams of pure table salt at room temperature, and boiling water can dissolve 190 grams.

 —

This text presents itself as a descend into folded sedimented matters—a descend through speculative lithospheric layers towards a softer and instable magmatic place.

Sedimentary rocks

In some places in Denmark, the underground is visible at the surface.

In the north-east of Bornholm you can see the metamorphic bedrock reaching the surface, while at Møn’s and Stevn’s cliffs, you can see thick layers of limestone exposed on the coasts.

The bedrock under Bornholm is believed to be up to 1.5 billion years old and consists mostly of granite and gneiss, which belong to the igneous and metamorphic rock groups, respectively.

An igneous rock means a rock formed from magma, i.e., a glowing mass of liquid rock that has solidified (granite). Metamorphic rock types arise from a transformation of already existing rock types by, for example, high temperatures and pressure (gneiss).

The chalk layers at Møn’s cliffs are somewhat younger, with an age of 70 million years.

70 million years ago, the area where Denmark is today was covered by a tropical sea, and in this sea lived algae with a skeleton of calcareous discs. When the algae died, the limestone skeletons fell to the sea floor, where a thick layer of chalk formed over millions of years. A mountain of sedimented algae bodies.

The thick chalk layers at Møn’s cliff are therefore the result of a sedimentation that lasted many millions of years, and the chalk layers at Møn’s cliff are an example of weakly compacted pelagic carbonate mud—a porous sedimented material that has not, however, been pressed together so hard that it has become limestone belonging to the order of sedimentary rocks.

Within this text, I’m interested in the sedimentation process as an open-ended and ongoing process suspended on a continuum between soft and hard.

Weakly compacted pelagic carbonate mud has formed after the saturation point has been reached—and yet it is plastic and malleable.
It is porous, soft, and comes apart.

The limestone is also formed after the saturation point has occurred—but here the material has become hard. Pressed together over a long period of time and under great pressure, this material is sedimented in such a form that it is more difficult to shape and dissolve.

While sedimentation in a geological sense, from a human point of view, could be considered as a slow process that spans over millions of years, we can witness the sedimentation and saturation process in “human” time when boiling pasta. It happens quite precisely (when possibly over-salting) as the salt falls to the bottom and remains there. Sedimenting.

But how do we know when a saturation point occurs within our own apparatus? How do we know if we gradually and overtime become sedimented within our habitual ways and thinking?

On the other side

Within this text, I am interested in both the process of sedimentation as well as how saturation points can possibly constitute valuable benchmarks in relation to softening what has become sedimented.

The saturation point offers itself as a dramatic metaphor; it’s the critical place between the hard and the soft, the liquid and the solid, and the dissolved and the sedimented—a liminal and thereby instable site, much like standing with our weight distributed on both legs with one foot placed in quicksand and the other on hardened concrete.

The saturation point marks a shift, after which matters of the same type are difficult to dissolve—and where the matter, instead, settles and subsequently sediments. It’s a change in mode from the active reflexive acquisition of matter towards a more automated indexing of matter that is settled, which you don’t actively decide on again and again before tapping into it. Saturation points can therefore also be described as transitions between recollection memory and procedural memory.

When matter is to be settled in the procedural memory, it happens through repetition, and it is in the establishment of matter in the procedural memory that the saturation point occurs.
As an example, it is in the procedural memory that our ability to cycle resides. You also hear of people who, after a brain injury, have still been able to play rehearsed piano pieces as this mattering has been established within the procedural memory.

Once matters have settled, they become hard, and it can prove difficult to soften matter again once it has sedimented. The acquisition of matters is thus not a passive process. When we do something, or orient ourselves toward certain matters, our apparatus simply changes, or as Sara Ahmed writes:

“The repetition of work is what makes the signs of work disappear. It is important that we think not only about what is repeated but also about how the repetition of actions takes us in certain directions.”

(Orientations matter, 2010)

In the previous pasta-boiling analogy, the saturation point is easily observed as it becomes apparent when the salt sinks to the bottom of the pot. We can see the actual saturation point occurring.
Within our own apparatus, saturation points can be observed to a lesser extent. Here, saturation points occur more often in places hidden from (our own) view, where internal processes reach saturation points after which they sediment; an invisible process of sedimentation—of internalization, during which, the sedimentation process itself over time becomes invisible. Yet again let us turn to Sara Ahmed:

“We could say that history ‘happens’ in the very repetition of gestures, which is what gives bodies their dispositions or tendencies. We might note here that the labor of such repetition disappears through labor: if we work hard at something, then it seems ‘effortless’. This paradox—with effort it becomes effortless—is precisely what makes history disappear in the moment of its enactment. The repetition of work is what makes the signs of work disappear. It is important that we think not only about what is repeated but also about how the repetition of actions takes us in certain directions..” 

 (Orientations Matter, 2010)

Both Ursula le Guin and Sara Ahmed are occupied with the nature of (hi)stories, and how history, by folding back on itself, again and again, layer on layer, has the capacity to sediment (and thereby becoming invisible).

As le Guin points out; It is the story that makes the difference—Ahmed pointing out that history ‘‘happens’’ in the very repetition of gestures.

In le Guin’s case, she’s proposing an alternative to the story of the hard, and in Ahmed’s case, she points out the danger or the criticality of how history, in its repetition, produces the hard; if we work hard at something, then it seems effortless.

The hard or the sedimented could then be said to inhabit a paradoxical, Janus-faced nature, in which the sedimented matter becomes invisible by (over)saturating itself.

But how can you feel that you are approaching a saturation point? What happens after the saturation point is reached?—and what potential do the states hold before and after a saturation point is reached?

When you read this text, you make use of matter that has sedimented .

Many years ago, you learned to read by dissolving matter into your system. At first, you learned about which sounds were attached to the letters and how the words were formed when the sounds were put together to form words. You learned to translate the words into signs and these signs into meaning.
When you read this text, it is the sedimented layered capacity of understanding words as signs that you tap into. In reading, you no longer repeat all these translations from letter to sound, to word, to sign, to meaning. The matter of alphabet, phonetic sounds, words, and signs is sedimented to such an extent that you may not even see the individual letters anymore but instead just see the shape of a word, the outline—a sign with a meaning.
It is extremely smart that you do not have to repeat the initial protocol every time you read.
It makes reading faster, and makes it possible to get more information in less time.
Here, sedimented matter can really be considered effective and helpful.
But what if someone wanted to stop being able to read in this way? What if you wanted to go back to the place where the letter had to be translated into sound again?
It is, of course, a strange wish to have—but if, for some inexplicable reason, you wanted to unlearn the ability to read a learned language, would you be able to do it?

Looking toward Husserl’s use of the term sedimentation in his text The origin of Geometry (P.165), we find the following:

“In view of the unavoidable sedimentation of mental products in the form of persisting linguistic acquisitions, which can be taken up again at first merely passively and be taken over by anyone else, such constructions remain a constant danger. This danger is avoided if one not merely convinces oneself ex post facto that the particular construction can be reactivated but assures oneself from the start, after the self-evident primal establishment, of its capacity to be reactivated and enduringly maintained."

And later, on page 174:

"We can also say now that history is from the start nothing other than the vital movement of coexistence and the interweaving of original formations and sedimentations of meaning.”

It seems like the dynamics of sedimentation is a slippery fish.

A Janus-headed (sea) creature that has the capacity to make itself invisible by repeating and reproducing itself through the generating of historical tissue. 

Because of the slippery nature of the dynamics of sedimentation, the saturation points can be difficult to capture, and perhaps it could be fruitful to consider saturation points as liminal transitions. Between the dissolved and the sedimented, stretched between liquid, plasticity, and sediment—between the soft and the hard.

We constantly make use of sedimented matter; when we read, write, draw, cycle, talk, eat, and cook spaghetti without the use of a cookbook, it is all sedimented matter we make use of. These learned protocols usually require few resources from us, and the sedimented matter is in many ways vital for us to be able to sustain an existence.

If we had to repeat the same actions all the time, without these actions that give birth to matter that was sedimented, we would probably be in a bad place.

When we have to learn something new, we often strive for this new matter to become sedimented.

With the desire of establishing a sedimented base level of knowledge, one therefore often repeats specific actions in order to thereby move knowledge from the recollection memory to the procedural, thereby creating new space in the recollection memory (CTRL ALT DEL).

As described above, the dynamics of sedimentation, while sometimes proving itself to be helpful, might also contain certain dangers.

The repetition can consequently result in an oversaturation of our horizon, which we cannot see beyond. The work has made itself invisible through the paradoxical dynamic of saturating everything, and thereby upholding and supporting different internalized structural conditions.

The feeling of being in a claustrophobic vacuum can set in—an (over)saturated sedimented hard state, which can prove difficult to soften.

Softenings and the potential of the (over)saturated

“I leave Sisyphus at the foot of the mountain. One always finds one’s burden again. But Sisyphus teaches the higher fidelity that negates the gods and raises rocks. He too concludes that all is well. This universe henceforth without a master seems to him neither sterile nor futile. Each atom of that stone, each mineral flake of that night-filled mountain, in itself, forms a world. The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man’s heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.”—Albert Camus

As Sisyphus (according to Albert Camus) defies the punishment of the gods by taking on the absurd, can we perhaps find some kind of calm or stability by understanding the artistic practice as an incredibly troubled place, which in its basic state is notoriously instable?

In the myth, Sisyphus is punished by the gods for, among other things, having tricked death itself. The punishment for this is not Sisyphus’ death, but something that is considered even worse, namely that he must forever push a stone up a mountain, after which the stone will always roll back down. It is a meaningless and completely absurd punishment, but precisely by accepting the senseless, Sisyphus, according to the French philosopher Albert Camus, creates meaning for himself—he takes on the absurd.

Perhaps we should, so to speak, take on the hassle when it comes dealing with the sedimented in both artistic practices and elsewhere? We must stay with the trouble, as Donna Haraway would say, “dare to stay with the messy, the complex, and troublesome” and try to deal with it, to listen, to talk, and act.

If the dynamics of sedimentation are maintained around a magmatic paradoxical center, we may also have to take such a paradoxical (and troublesome) multibinary look at our own artistic practice (and life in general) if we want to enable ourselves to examine whether soft flows have turned into habitual dogma, and whether the magmatic core has solidified and turned into stone?

Perhaps we can learn to dwell with the saturation points, as places that might give us answers and lead us to new places? When the resistance becomes too hard, and it feels like you’re walking in tar, yes, maybe you’re on the other side of a saturation point—a place where the matter is solidifying, sedimenting, and becoming hard? A place where matter is no longer loosely packed pelagic carbonate mud but rather limestone? A place where the balance has tipped over and where the amount of hard sedimented matter has become too great? A place where the weight of sediment is now weighing you down, and a place that you now have to try to soften instead?

So, the saturation point can perhaps be seen as a turning point?
As valuable and potentially fertile places that enable you to respond to the dynamics of sedimentation in a constructive and critical way.

Perhaps we can understand the troubled artistic practice (and life) as a constantly oscillating and trembling field expressed by a series of seemingly opposite movements and positions that we work in—and between—in a constant interaction?

The artistic practice is, in this understanding, a troublesome, confusing and possibly wonderful creative space in which there is no question of a single oscillation occurring between two different positions in a binary and dialectical relationship to each other, but rather of countless oscillations that fold and unfold at one and the same time (and other times) crisscross each other—like fluctuating flashes between different points at different speeds and with different power.

Perhaps we can navigate by considering this instable oscillating tremor as the basic state of artistic practice—a field that cannot be considered a binary field where you are either in one place or another, but to a much greater extent, a continuum in which you are in one place and in one time and in another place and in another time at the same time(s), on top of, or offset from each other in a series of meaningful superpositions in which either/or/both/and/now/before/past/present exist at one and the same time(s) and place(s).

In this way of looking at artistic practice, it is thus a complex dynamic series of (quantum) mechanics that one finds oneself in and constantly navigates.

“What if instability, or rather the indeterminacy of in/stability, is the condition for the possibility of taking a stand?”

 (Karen Barad, Intra-actions (p 180), interviewed by Adam Kleinman, 2021) 

 °dH

The hardness of water is measured in the unit °dH (Deutsche Härte), and the degree of hardness is an expression of the concentration of calcium and magnesium ions in the water.

The hardness of concrete is measured on the Mohs scale named after the German geologist Friedrich Mohs.
The Mohs hardness scale is divided into 10 different levels of hardness, where the value 10 is the hardest and corresponds to the hardness of a diamond.

Concrete is often between 3 and 7 Mohs. .

We do not measure softness to the same extent. The soft is, of course, also present in the above different scales, but softness is always conditioned by hardness. We seem to orient ourselves more towards the latter.

Perhaps we should develop some systems that measure softness? Or maybe it is just not interested in being measured?

Perhaps we should instead train ourselves to orient towards the soft and dwell in the soft places?

Soften what has already become sedimented and hard?

In chemistry and physics, saturation points also apply to absorption of chemicals or energy. Once an object has reached its saturation point, additional energy must go elsewhere.

The term can also refer to light.

Every object is capable of absorbing a certain amount of light, no matter how small that amount may be, and when the maximum amount of light is absorbed, additional light is refracted.

Perhaps, like the light that is absorbed and then refracted, we can jump from mode to mode and illuminate changing areas in our own practice with changing energies?

Perhaps, precisely by establishing such a metaperspective, we can enable ourselves to be in artistic practices in more sustainable ways?

A mode of ongoing softening, in which we constantly soften what has become sedimented and navigate, react and create within this quivering, paradoxical and in many ways labile state in which an artistic practice could be said to exist?