Lucas Heinen and Marisa Maré collaborate on a site-responsive installation in the CP Nel Museum clock tower, incorporating digital and sculptural artworks with interactive soundscapes. Drawing from their respective backgrounds in music and visual arts, the project explores the intersection of sound, image, and materiality within the sociohistorical landscape of the Klein Karoo.

Uit respek vir die komplekse geskiedenis van die C.P. Nel-museum se sandsteengebou, wat ’n erfenisterrein is, versamel die kunstenaars stof van die oppervlakte as beginpunt vir die vervaardiging van Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM)-beelde. Tot 5 000 keer vergroot, onthul hierdie beelde teksture en abstrakte vorme waar spore van mense, die natuurlike wêreld en die geboude omgewing saamvloei, wat fragmente van ’n wêreld skep wat tegelyk mikroskopies en monumentaal is.

Viewers are invited to engage with the installation by sitting at a table, opening drawers, or paging through a book. Each interaction activates soundscapes that evoke ancient landscapes reimagined through a contemporary lens, inviting curiosity and wonder.

Dust becomes the quiet thread that ties these elements together. Unlike the sandstone from which the building was hewn, or the violence the surrounding landscape has witnessed in both colonial and contemporary times, dust performs as an active agent in the work. It has many ways of being: At once an event and a residue, a process and an assemblage. It gathers time and disperses it. In its instability and movement, dust troubles the boundaries between objects and environment, human and nonhuman, life and decay. It gestures toward impermanence while asserting the persistence of matter beyond our immediate existence.

In this way, Stof tot verhaal presents dust as an active participant in the story, not simply a leftover trace of history. Through magnification, sound, and interactive engagement, the work invites viewers to experience dust as a living force, one that both shapes and is shaped by the intertwined influences of place, time, and human presence.