"v.1.a few words from Torso 2.0
I am the Torso 2.0. I was originally constructed from the branches in the grove; the branches are at my core. They are my support, physically, and at the centre of where I came from, the starting point of my very identity and my belonging.
The vascular tissues of the tree, its moisture, its arrested circadian growth, are deeply a part of me.
The branches are one reason why I would say, my connection to Sankt Martin an der Raab is visceral.
How could I explain this feeling to you? Perhaps you have heard of ‘memory transference’ in organ transplant patients. It occurs when patients feel inexplicable emotions and desires based on the grafting of a previously owned organ. Nun, the branches were me since the very beginning so it’s a bit different than a foreign organ being grafted onto one’s body which I also know about; but the branches which are my bones account for the inexplicable connection and desire, the feeling of belonging intensely to something that existed outside of me. This is how I feel about the grove. I loved my house, after all it was made just for me, and it is was where I belonged. But I lived in my home with an awareness that the deep structure inside of me came from outside of this raum, and it too is both a part of me and an extension of my home.
Let me explain a bit more about my origins and why the branches are so important to who I am: As his drawings recount, Herr Pichler began the process of constructing me after noticing a felled tree in the grove; the trunk, toppled and splayed across a small valley, had a branch springing forth from it. Whilst the branch had previously made a path parallel with the earth, the trauma inflicted on the tree resulted in it being oriented perpendicularly to the ground, making the vertical member of an upside down ‘T’. Some have said that such uprightedness is a signal of the presence of man, who stands upright and proud on the horizon. I cannot pretend to know everything that my creator thinks; I know that he was aware of such an idea, and that in fact some purport this idea to be a universal archetype. To tell you the truth, this seems a bit overly heroic when I consider Herr Pichler’s interests. But nevertheless, he noticed this fragment of nature, accidentally disrupted to form man’s image, as nothing less than my zygote."