GMU:Re-enchanting the field/Marite Helena Kuus

From Medien Wiki

I am interested in the ash as a material, what is there to be created from death? We can’t turn back time but we can confront what is left behind and discuss where to go from here. This kind of post-industrial site isn’t an anomaly, in fact this wasteland isn’t even contained to this small area. Waste and toxicity is embedded into our lives, it’s a part of us. Humans until now have not evolved to be able to process this toxicity, we need to protect ourselves from it and try to undo it. Other species are more adaptable and have accepted this new world for what it is. There is an orchid in the oil shale mountains that has adapted to this landscape and is thriving in it. There are worms (larvae of the beetle Zophobas morio) that eat polystyrene because their gut enzymes can digest the plastic. Heather Davis speaks of the “disruption of boundaries” in the anthropocene, wherein everything is enmeshed: “try as we might to remove ourselves, to maintain a solid division between nature and culture, or the natural and synthetic, everything emerges from and is ultimately folded back into the earth in a fundamentally intra-active process.” (Davis, Heather. Plastic Matter. London, Duke University Press, 2022, p. 10.)

I am also interested in ways of documenting processes. As Felix said in one of our earlier sessions, the graphic design in scientific publications is very specific and often doesn’t leave much room for artistic expression. As a materials based artist, chemical diagrams mean little to me as I am used to interacting directly with matter. How do we document tangible materials in our research in combination with the intangible stories, histories and feelings that are intertwined with the physicality of the location?

As I have a background in textile and curating, I have been considering the nature of tactile experiences and figuring out how to document and publish them. Archives and records tend to keep track of binary information, how to ensure that future archives also contain haptic knowledge?

Other references I will consult during this process include “Erosion: Essays of Undoing” by Terry Tempest Williams (Sarah Crichton Books, 2019) and “Compost Reader” edited by Institute for Postnatural Studies (Cthulhu Books, 2021).