Vital Remains is a site-specific installation created at Le Cyclop, the site of Jean Tinguely's 1969 monumental sculpture in collaboration with the Verrerie d'art de Soisy-sur-École. In the forest of Milly, fallen dead trees have decayed, but also become habitat- sheltering species, sustaining new ecologies through their collapse. The soil there is rich in nutrients, producing medicinal herbs that benefit people. Yet, the soil that made them is depleted in the process.

The installation holds three elements: soil, oil, and plant. Each is a stage in a chain of translation- the earth's energy absorbed by roots, converted into medicinal matter, drawn out as oil, carried to people as scent. Glass is cast around a burned found tree trunk that the artist carved inside: the mold becomes the material; the tree's absence becomes form. Each vessel holds these elements, letting the compost between vessels generate meaning.

When the seismograph detects vibration, the machinery exhales. It responds to the ground, not to the audience - to the building's structural hum, the low frequency of the space itself. Vibration is the connective tissue: between soil and root, between herb and oil, between the work and its site. What is released depends on what the space is already doing. The audience receives the scent at the end of this chain - the final translation of something the earth gave up. A breath, a presence, a trace.