Ballad of the End: frottages

Ballad of the End: Frottages consists of fifteen works created in the context of the broader Ballad of the End project, employing stone casting and frottage techniques. The series emerges from an exploration of materiality, gesture, and the interplay between human action and the resistance of natural elements. These works also form part of a special edition of the zine, where the physical traces of intervention are preserved as artifacts of experience.

The tuff stone serves as a responsive matrix, capable of capturing movement in multiple directions. During the Ballad of the End performance, participants strike, drag, and slam the stone, leaving behind scratches, dents, and impressions. These ephemeral signs are then recorded and engraved, through careful incisions, transforming temporary gestures into enduring traces. Graphite is applied to transfer the tactile memory of the stone onto paper, producing surfaces that carry both the material history of the boulder and the direct interaction of human hands.

In this process, paper becomes a repository of movement, recording both the weight of the stone and the nuanced gestures of participants. Fingerprints, marks, and scratches intertwine with the graphite impressions, creating works that exist simultaneously as documents of action, embodiments of energy, and reflections on the material presence of bodies in space. Each frottage functions as a sediment of performance, a visual and tactile archive of ephemeral interactions rendered permanent through technique.

Philosophically, the series investigates the capacity of material objects to retain memory and act as agents within artistic processes. It highlights the entanglement of human and non-human agencies, emphasizing how bodies, stones, and tools participate collectively in the generation of form. The works confront the viewer with the traces of intensity, repetition, and transformation, suggesting that meaning emerges not only from intention but also from the responsive properties of materials.

Ultimately, Ballad of the End: Frottages extends the performative, auditory, and sculptural dimensions of the larger project, foregrounding the corporeal, the material, and the ephemeral as central components of artistic investigation. It situates gesture and trace as critical tools for understanding the intersection of human activity, material resistance, and the persistence of memory in physical form.