The Dead Sea is a saline lake whose shores are held in place by a salty crust that, as the lake water rapidly recedes, is eroded by groundwater and sporadically collapses, revealing large sink holes. Each year, the water level in the Dead Sea falls by over 1 meter, as up to 96% of the water from the Jordan River, the only river flowing into the Dead Sea, is diverted for agriculture and urban development. The sinkholes have caused many tourist sites and businesses to close at the shores of the Dead Sea, inadvertently creating a partial zone on the shores of the lake that protects the ecology and inhibits development.
The corresponding sound recordings were made in a cave created by an old limestone quarry underneath the city of Jerusalem. The limestone extracted from the cave was used in part to build the city above it. The sounds in the cave are of water seeping through the limestone from the city above, just as the rain seeps into the Dead Sea as groundwater, dissolving the salty shores as it flows.
The Aletsch Glacier in Switzerland is the largest glacier in the Alps. From its length of 20 kilometers, it is receding at a rate of approximately 50 meters a year. The photographs and sound were recorded in an ice cave underneath the glacier. Air pockets, bubbles, rocks and other particles that have been suspended in the ice for thousands of years are illuminated by blue, filtered daylight through the ice.
“Cerknica (Part III, audio)” was recorded in Križna cave in Slovenia. The audio recording documents a performative interaction modifying the sounds of water drops with a found piece of metal and natural objects, contact microphones, feedback and distortion. The water drops fall from the cave’s ceiling, originating from ground water seepage through the limestone bedrock above. Above ground, Lake Cerknica appears and disappears with the rainfall; it flows through the porous limestone which forms the entire Karst region in Slovenia, providing water to an underground network of caves and waterways. In contrast to the other sites in this project (a receding glacier and the dead sea), this lake disappears and returns through natural cycles dependant on the rain. The water feeds the caves which support unique and fragile ecosystems.
Water from the intermittent lake disappears underground, flows through the network of caves and resurfaces in Rakov Škocjan valley, a valley created by the collapse of a karst cave. Before the caves were fully mapped out, Lake Cerknica was the subject of many theories and folk lore. In 1685, the scientist Valvasor attempted to explain the disappearance of the lake with a drawing of tubes and tunnels that illustrated how the 'hydraulics' worked. The lake also hosts a large population of fish. Each year, when the lake dries up, locals gather to save the fish and move them to the dammed areas of the lake.
Formed in 1889, the Speleological Association of Slovenia (or ‘cave society’) protects and manages over 11,000 caves in the Slovenian Karst Region. Križna jama cave holds more than 40 lakes within its depths and is home to 60 underground species.
Lake Cerknica by Johan Weikhard von Valvasor
Illustration of Lacus Cirknicensis potiora phaenomena published in Acta Eruditorum, 1689