“Unearthing” is a 3-hour task-based performance in the Tbilisi National History Museum. I was invited to work in-situ responding to the site and collection. Located on the top floor of the museum, I discovered a large flower pot filled with soil and a tall, thin pedestal within an arched alcove. Thinking about the problem of preservation, display, ritual, and the passage of time, I engaged with these “found” materials: soil from the land and a pedestal used for exhibitions (yet seemingly abandoned). The Tbilisi History Museum is an eclectic, post-Soviet, dimly-lit alternative to the Western museums I am familiar with. My objective was to move all of the soil by hand from the flower pot onto the pedestal with slow, concentrated, and repeated movement; a caring, deliberate, yet futile gesture. Inevitably, the soil fell from the pedestal, spilling onto the floor, creating a landscape of brown earth around its base and under my feet. The archway framed the scene, and I was dressed in a futuristic gold-sequined suit. I explored the expansion and contraction of time, shifting my perception of reality through presence. Slowing down my own movements, heightening my awareness of body, breath, materials, sounds, and light, I brought the viewer along with me as they too slowed down to witness what was happening. The performance ended when all of the soil had been moved out of the pot, onto the pedestal and floor.