Muld (Soil)
2022
S&M
Sabine Wedege is a visual artist from Denmark. Her interdisciplinary practice moves between sculpture, text, video, and sound, used in parallel and in contrast with each other. Her works morph from connections between often very disparate issues found in history and in our present world – connecting contemporary issues and questions. Educated from Jutland Art Academy in Aarhus, Denmark and Faculty of Fine Arts at the University of Arts in Belgrade, Serbia.
@sabinewedege
Magdalene Solli is a Norwegian dancer based in Oslo. While rooted in dance practices, she often works with dance making, choreography and performing within interdisciplinary collaborations. She’s also occupied with critical writing, and co-runs the performing arts collective and studio Montebøllo. Educated from Oslo National Academy of the Arts, Norway, the University of Stavanger, Norway, and the Academy of Performing Arts in Bratislava (VŠMU), Slovakia.
@monteboello
S&M is a collaboration between Sabine Wedege and Magdalene Solli
Curated and organized by RUM два
@rumdva
Special thanks to Center424, Belgrade AIR and BYZART
The exhibition is in the window of Center424, Prizenska 9, Belgrade, Serbia, from 11/10-22 until 18/10-22
Photo: RUM два
Notes on Muld
131022, Beograd
Danish muld, from Norse mold means dust, soil. The word originally points to a substance
that is ground to pieces, (‘det som er malt sund’).
Muld
Muld is a term that is commonly used both in everyday speech and among farmers. The term
can be used about soil in general, but in agriculture muld usually refers to fat, black soil of
rotten plant parts. Through the doings of a high number of bacteria, as well as the passages
and slime from earthworms, this topsoil forms a desired crumb structure in which plants
thrive. This dark matter is widespread in Eastern Denmark on original clay moraine. In
Norway, muld is most likely to be found in stream valleys and slopes with rich vegetation and
rich deciduous forest, as well as in highly productive spruce forests.
Lumbricidae / Regnorme / Meitemark / Earthworm
Down in the earth, these ancient slimy creatures quietly work magic day and night, right
under our very feet. Earthworms, or ‘the intestines of the earth’, as Aristotle called them, are
best found in muld, but they’re almost everywhere, even in acidic forest soil.
The earthworms provide good muld. They feed on rotting plant remains, drag dead leaves
underground with them, and release slime on their way through the earth tunnels they create.
These worm-doings stabilize the structure of the soil – they nourish, allow for air to enter, and
just as the rainwater seeps into the ground, plants and microorganisms also thrive.
In Danish this worm is called Regnorme, rain worm. Whenever there is a heavy rain,
earthworms appear on the surfaces of the ground for unknown reasons, and on damp, wet
nights, you can see two and two of them interlocked for several hours surrounded by slimy
secretions.
Muld
In Norwegian and Danish poetry muld is used about the soil that serves as a resting place for
the dead, from which we have the general Norwegian and Danish expressions ’ligge under
mulde’ or ‘være under mulde’ meaning to lie in the grave, to be buried, and or dead. Other
occurrences are in sentences such as; ‘liget må i muldet ned’ meaning the corpse has to be
buried; ‘Gid jeg laa under mulde’ which translates to the wishful ‘If I only laid in the grave’;
‘så lenge mitt hode er oven mulde’ meaning as long as my head is above the ground, or as
long as I’m still alive; ‘komme i viet muld’ meaning to be buried in consecrated (Christian)
ground; and ‘hvorfor skal kirken nu i muld?’ which translates to ‘why is the church going into
the muld’, which could be a question of both why the church seemingly have to be
inextricably consigned to destruction (or downfall), or simply why it’s going to be
demolished. Muld is also used in poetry that contain religious views, pointing to the soil being
the substance from which all living matter is created and dissolves into again at death. Within
religious (protestant) context muld is most often used in relation to the earthbound, material
and perishable (as opposed to the heavenly, spiritual and eternal, in a dualistic sense).
Sources:
«mold». I: Bokmålsordboka. Språkrådet og Universitetet i Bergen. <https://ordbokene.no/bm/38906/mold>
(13.10.2022).
Muld in NAOB = Det Norske Akademies ordbok (Norwegian Academy Dictionary). Oslo: Det Norske Akademi
for Språk og Litteratur. <https:naob.no> (October 2022)
Muld in Den Danske Ordbog at ordnet.dk. 2022, October 13, from https://ordnet.dk/ddo/ordbog?query=muld
brunjord in Store norske leksikon at snl.no. 2022, October 13, from https://snl.no/brunjord
Støp-Bowitz, Carl; Sømme, Lauritz S.; Hovde, Kjell-Olav; Bakken, Torkild: meitemark in Store norske leksikon
at snl.no. 2022, October 13, from https://snl.no/meitemark
All about earthworms at welcomewildlife.com. 2022, October 13, from https://www.welcomewildlife.com/all-
about-earthworms/
Muld (2022, October 13). Wikipedia https://da.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muld
Krummestruktur (2022, October 13). Wikipedia https://da.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krummestruktur
Lumbricidae (2022, October 13). Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lumbricidae
Poetry on Muld
131022, Beograd
To claim muld soil and land
find out borders and switching borders
Denmark-Norway was colonizers
Denmark-Norway is colonizers
we take we raid
humans
nature
money
traditions
pride
life
heart
spirituality
we...
live in a welfare society?
we dig in muld soil, water, seabed, capitalism
drilling oil in the North Sea
colonizing it
with settlers on drilling rigs
a black mass
from the underground
black masses on All Hallows Eve
spreading black metal mass in the face
corpsepainting
while scandinavianize Serbian muld soil, pine, cones, and chestnuts
it dries out in the window sun
it decays
into muld soil
long after we leave
