Artistic Research Projects
Mineral Springs of Greece
Principal Investigator: Dr Lydia Xynogala, ETH Zurich, PostDoc HfG
A 1938 book publication by Nikolaos Lekkas titled The 750 Mineral Springs of Greece shows how the scientific analysis of mineral springs, rocks, and soil in Greece led to a new understanding of the country’s resources: its airs, waters and places. The wealth of mineral springs conveyed in the book presents an extraordinary imaginary of Greece: a geography centred around a healing network. Decades of numerous man-made activities- building, infrastructure works, state, municipal and private negligence- have greatly impacted them. What exactly is their state today? We pay attention in order to imagine potential futures, away from the narratives of the luxury spa exploitation and fast tourism consumption. Through actions and conversations we raise questions; we would like the springs and baths to remain accessible as sites of care for all. – “Friends of the 750 Mineral Baths of Greece” website
Architecture of Spectacle
My ongoing investigation examines purpose-built, temporary structures at extreme sport events, including slopestyle and downhill mountain biking, big air snowboarding, and downhill ice-cross courses. These structures, designed to maximize speed and enable precise takeoffs and landings, are carefully integrated into natural or urban landscapes, with physics dictating their balance between challenge and possibility. Each course aims to outdo the last, pushing athletes to break records and showcase new tricks. – adapted from a text in the Kings Review “Extremes” issue
On Inserts, Devices and other Human-made Structures
My artistic inquiry examines human-made interventions in the environment, focusing on what I term “inserts.” These inserts encompass a wide range of temporary and permanent built forms and infrastructures which often stand as alien gestures designed to enable human activity in ways that are not native to the existing landscape. As such, they critique their surroundings and serve as ideal entry points for exploring broader processes such as land management, resource flows, material extraction, and the creation of leisure spaces. My research interrogates who designs and constructs these structures and their motivations—be it to dominate the landscape, amplify natural features, generate profit, or temporarily reimagine urban space—and their historical and environmental consequences.
The Mockup Series
In architecture, mockups are 1:1 models, realistic sections of a new building, with which the interplay of surfaces and forms is tested fragmentarily; mockups facilitate assessment of the subsequent building’s impact within its immediate environment. In their original function, the Mockups are bound to a specific location and a precisely defined task. In Wootton’s works they become placeless, abstract, sometimes seemingly absurd objects, which, out of their context, withhold all information regarding function, location and proportions. This disorientation on the part of the observer, brought about by the lack of any scale-defining point of reference, is an essential aspect of Wootton’s artistic work. His recording comes across as so staged and artificial, that looking through the camera lens becomes an act of defamiliarisation – and even the question of whether this is a depiction of a real existing location or of a model, cannot be answered offhand. – adapted from a text by Ferial Nadja Karrasch