James Beckett

Like an archeologist, James Beckett excavates material cultures, discovering ‘poor’ objects that cast light onto industrial and other social histories. The project which will be presented in Auckland revolves around the metaphor of ‘digging holes’ in order to reveal a story. In Dowsing Schools: Preliminary Findings and Corresponding Survey Kit, the artist has collaborated with two British dowsers, inviting them to Amsterdam to scope the grounds of local primary and secondary schools.

Dowsing, or water divining, exists at the threshold between science and a pagan ritual; it uses special bifurcated sticks to find structures below the surface, including water, oil as well as hidden objects.

Arranged as if the viewer were transported in a museum, Beckett’s installation recounts the dowsers’ discoveries through sound. It presents their tool kit including a ‘plane table’, which is a map-making system, shovels and other materials taken from the school sites.

The combination of artifacts in the installation requires a suspension of disbelief and suggests an experience that transcends time and space. Through the dowsers’ actions, evocative objects surface and, together with them, memories from an unassuming yet suggestive past.