About the Work

TRANS(re)LATION is an exploration of how place and affect shape meaning. The work draws inspiration from Julia Kristeva’s concept of the semiotic - an emotional field tied to instinct, felt in the rhythm, intonation, and pauses of language rather than its literal meanings.

Over several years, I returned to the Arboretum in Almindingen on Bornholm, walking the path around the largest lake, intermittently enclosed by three rocky areas. An arboretum is a semi-wild park cultivated for scientific study, with diverse trees, bushes, open lawns, and a web of paths. This one was established in 1932 by dendrology enthusiast and forest ranger A.F. Valdemar Seier.

This lake path became a space where I could (carto-)graph inner states onto outer geography. I identified three rocky viewpoints around the lake—each with its coordinates marked by white squares in the artwork. These points serve as both data and metaphor, forming a triangle when layered on top one another. From point to line, to curve, to circle - this geometric movement gestures toward a transition from two-dimensional mapping to something spatial, embodied, and affective.

Each point is reflected in an everyday object - paper, scissors, and rock - placed on and emerging from a circular steel plate positioned in front of the three wall-mounted artworks. Each object is either wound or pierced by a coloured thread, which grows out of holes in the steel plate. These holes directly correspond to the coordinates of the rocky viewpoints around the lake. Each coordinate is assigned a specific thread colour, which also matches the colour of the Braille dots in the artworks, where the accompanying poem is rendered. The tactile markings echo the hidden structures of language and its emotional resonances.

To my great delight, poet and writer Peter Poulsen composed a poem for the Braille component of this installation. His text begins with an encounter with the Arboretum’s rocks - things that, like emotion, surface by chance and shape the terrain from below. By listening to the stone, he gives it a voice. And so it has always been.

© Camilla Howalt