Alexander Sebastianus Indonesian, b. 1995
Archival Fragments #02-12; Mt. Prangango, West Java, 2026
Cartographic map, teakwood specimen shelf, photographic rope on cotton, lithified assemblage of volcanic rocks and matter, shredded consumable waste and plastic, burnt wood trunks and leaves, hair and bodily sediments, gathered soil, holy water from a spring, and other particles of matter.
37 x 50 x 6 cm
'Archival Fragments #02–12 emerged from four expeditions to Mt. Pangrango, a 1,986-metre volcanic mountain in West Java. Each journey, taking approximately 10.5–11.5 hours, became a form of pilgrimage: a repeated...
"Archival Fragments #02–12 emerged from four expeditions to Mt. Pangrango, a 1,986-metre volcanic mountain in West Java. Each journey, taking approximately 10.5–11.5 hours, became a form of pilgrimage: a repeated passage through a geological landscape that is also understood through spiritual and cultural histories.
Pangrango is approached through the idea of the kabuyutan—a sacred site and spiritual bridge connecting the human world to the divine. Within this context, the mountain is not only a geological formation, but a place where the material and spiritual worlds intersect. Its rocks, soil, water, vegetation, and other matter become carriers of both geological time and cultural memory.
During the four expeditions, I gathered volcanic rocks and organic matter from the mountain, alongside the material residues of my own presence: discarded consumables and plastic, burnt wood and leaves, hair, bodily sediments, soil, and holy water collected from a spring. These materials were brought together and lithified, transforming the accumulated remnants of each journey into new geological bodies.
The work considers lithification as a process of remembering. Four expeditions become layers of sediment, with each journey compressed into matter. Geological fragments formed through processes far beyond human time are placed alongside substances belonging to the immediate and intimate scale of the body. Waste, organic matter, bodily residue, and volcanic rock are given the same material condition, collapsing distinctions between the natural and the manufactured, the sacred and the discarded.
The volcanic rocks are central to this process. Removed from their original geological context, they become fragments of the mountain carried into another landscape: the studio, the archive, the sculpture. Their transformation is also a transformation of their status. They move from geological matter into specimen, from specimen into relic, and from relic into sculptural body. Through this act, I am interested in the human tendency to sacralize and anthropomorphize rocks—to treat geological matter as something that can hold memory, presence, ancestry, and agency.
Within my ongoing neo-geological research, the work proposes a form of geology that includes not only deep time, but human movement and experience. The body becomes another geological agent: walking, consuming, sweating, shedding, carrying, gathering, and leaving traces behind. The materials of the pilgrimage therefore become a kind of personal stratigraphy.
Archival Fragments is an attempt to lithify memory itself. Rather than documenting the four expeditions through images or written records alone, their traces are materially compressed into sculptural forms. The mountain, the pilgrim, the sacred, the discarded, and the geological become entangled within a single archive.
The work asks what might constitute a geological record when human presence is allowed to become sediment. It considers whether memory can be fossilized, whether pilgrimage can become strata, and whether a rock can become more than an object of geological study—a witness, a relic, or a body carrying the memory of a place."
Pangrango is approached through the idea of the kabuyutan—a sacred site and spiritual bridge connecting the human world to the divine. Within this context, the mountain is not only a geological formation, but a place where the material and spiritual worlds intersect. Its rocks, soil, water, vegetation, and other matter become carriers of both geological time and cultural memory.
During the four expeditions, I gathered volcanic rocks and organic matter from the mountain, alongside the material residues of my own presence: discarded consumables and plastic, burnt wood and leaves, hair, bodily sediments, soil, and holy water collected from a spring. These materials were brought together and lithified, transforming the accumulated remnants of each journey into new geological bodies.
The work considers lithification as a process of remembering. Four expeditions become layers of sediment, with each journey compressed into matter. Geological fragments formed through processes far beyond human time are placed alongside substances belonging to the immediate and intimate scale of the body. Waste, organic matter, bodily residue, and volcanic rock are given the same material condition, collapsing distinctions between the natural and the manufactured, the sacred and the discarded.
The volcanic rocks are central to this process. Removed from their original geological context, they become fragments of the mountain carried into another landscape: the studio, the archive, the sculpture. Their transformation is also a transformation of their status. They move from geological matter into specimen, from specimen into relic, and from relic into sculptural body. Through this act, I am interested in the human tendency to sacralize and anthropomorphize rocks—to treat geological matter as something that can hold memory, presence, ancestry, and agency.
Within my ongoing neo-geological research, the work proposes a form of geology that includes not only deep time, but human movement and experience. The body becomes another geological agent: walking, consuming, sweating, shedding, carrying, gathering, and leaving traces behind. The materials of the pilgrimage therefore become a kind of personal stratigraphy.
Archival Fragments is an attempt to lithify memory itself. Rather than documenting the four expeditions through images or written records alone, their traces are materially compressed into sculptural forms. The mountain, the pilgrim, the sacred, the discarded, and the geological become entangled within a single archive.
The work asks what might constitute a geological record when human presence is allowed to become sediment. It considers whether memory can be fossilized, whether pilgrimage can become strata, and whether a rock can become more than an object of geological study—a witness, a relic, or a body carrying the memory of a place."
