Lezli Rubin-Kunda

Marking stones

I came to Nodar with no idea of the kind of landscape I would encounter. As I walked the paths around the village and the surrounding hills, what quickly emerged as the most intriguing feature for me was theslate rock-the primary material under lying everything, visible everywhere-from the terraced hills, to the rock-strewn ground, to the pebbles in the river: used as paving for the roads, as roofing for the buildings; as slabs,propped up for fences, and door posts; used for walls, some new and evenly formed, some so over grown with vines and vegetation that one could no longer tell if they were natural orman-made. The two states were continually shifting, the natural stone used to build, and the built dissolving back into the natural, used and reused for generations, constantly recycled.

There was a visual feast in the rich variety of shapes: From slivers and pebbles to huge slabs, from smooth, water-worn forms to hard-edged shapes; and of colors-from intense mineral-stained shades to endless gradations of grey.

At first I took slate back to the studio and experimented, drew on it, scratched into, wrote on it like on old school slate boards.But the rock forms in their original locations in and around the village, this was their real attraction. I only needed to observe and high light them by marking them, interacting lightly, and leaving them in their place, for others to come across, before the marks faded away, and the rock returned to its undifferentiated state in the landscape.

The temporal act of discovering and interacting with the slate (and recorded in the video) and not any finished “drawing” was,in fact, the work. The kind of marking was determined entirely by the rock it self-its position, its surface textures, its use ordisuse, the effects of light or weather; spontaneously, as I encountered a rock that attracted me, the “content” of the drawing emerged. On one, the play of the sunlight through the vine created moving shapes that I traced; on another I outlined the shadow of a plant on its surface. Sometimes moss or mildew created shapes that I circled or joined up. I imitated with my line the movement of the water as it ran over the paving stones and down the roads. I continued the wandering lines of vines creeping up a wall; on slabs leaning against a house I scribbled graffiti, I outlined the shapes of small slate pieces on flatsur faces, or continued the scrawls of a rock painting on a hugeslab. One rock’s markings suggested a sad face, another a howling one. On several huge slabs, that had mysterious openings or indentations, I overlaid paper and made large graphite rubbings.

On the last day, I hung pieces of slate from my clothing, tied stones to a walking stick and made my way through the village,the stones clinking and cluttering on the slate-paved roads.

Soon my markings on the rocks will have faded, all that will be remembered may be that faint clinking of rock against rock.

Lezli Rubin-Kunda she is an Israeli multidisciplinary artist working in performance, installation, photography and drawing. Her practice in the last 10 years has focused on site-specific projects exploring an environment through direct exploration, using her body, and the available materials of the site to carry out actions and to create temporary configurations. She has presented her work throughout Israel, Europe and North America in performance, video and multidisciplinary festivals.