SRG Bennett

WHO SAW THE DEEP (2018-)

In Spring 2018 I visited nine points arranged on the map precisely as a square across Essex, Hertfordshire and London. From each point I extracted a small volume of soil. The soil went on to be impressed with geographical data and incorporated into Earth-Gallery-Earth, a work exploring sustainability, knowledge and the ephemeral nature of our digital epoch.

But what of the nine negative spaces left by the digging? Where earth was excavated, it was replaced with a ceramic tablet showing the same geographical data. Who Saw the Deep is the resulting artwork, comprising nine ceramic tablets spanning a 10x10 mile square area in England.

Ceramic is one of the more permanent materials humans have access to. Some of our earliest writing dates 5000 years ago to Ancient Mesapotamia. Here humans first started recording knowledge in abstract codes on cuneiform tablets. The movement of the stars, information about rulers, debts owed and poems were carved into wet clay, accidentally fired as libraries and palaces burned to the ground. The “Epic of Gilgamesh” dates from this time, the opening line of which is “He who saw the deep…”.

I’ve returned to the nine locations over the years. Some of the ceramic tablets are still just about visible, gradually being overtaken by soil and the brambles; others have already disappeared. As a piece of speculative archaeology, Who Saw the Deep poses a question: what will future civilisations make of what we leave behind?