Silvia Steiger "Project in the dunes near Castricum"

‘What we see is a series of extremely small objects in a dune landscape, things that belong there or are of 'foreign' origin and have been carried or blown in: broken birds’ eggs, bleached bones, an unexpected flower, bent plastic cable, a snail shell lying right next to a piece of wood, etc. The observer’s job is to read these clues twice: to recognize the objects a second time as signs, and then to read them. And on top of that, to become engrossed in the enterprise that has led from the object to the presentation of that object here, in this photograph. The key word is “reading”. Objects have been gathered in a landscape; a collection of signs has emerged. Legere means both reading and collecting. Intuition and attention, the ability to react spontaneously to signals - all this the observer must supply on his own by immersing himself. All he gets to see, after all, is the presentation. Silvia Steiger’s work leads us to the things in the form of writing, writing that lies before us, remarkably familiar yet obscure.’ (Hans-Thies Lehmann, ‘Aardtekens in het duingebied bij Castricum. Augustus 1983’ [Earth signs in the dunes near Castricum. August 1983], De Appel, 3 (1983) 3, p. 5.)