Foresters use a coring device – a tool resembling a large corkscrew – to very delicately extract a small sample of a tree (no larger than the size of one’s pinky finger) in order to count the tree’s rings, thus ascertaining its age. The coring tool is so precise that a forester can slide the tiny sample back into the tree after counting the rings, leaving almost no trace.
Four hundred cores will be taken from the tree trunks in David Chipperfield’s exhibition Sticks and Stones and given to the four hundred artists who participated in the activities of the Institut für Raumexperimente over the years. Each participant will then insert their “IfRex core” into a situation, a context, or an environment, give it to a person, or keep it as a memento, as a symbol of the peaceful obtainment of knowledge and experience through gentle, precise, and intelligent means.
