Background
I have worked with clay as ceramics materials for some times, but I have little experience in looking into the origin of clay and other minerals. I am curious about how materials are extracted from the lands and what changes are made during the processes. I am most interested in human activities altering the landscape unintentionally.
For this course I would like to explore the field by looking into the traces of human activities, remapping and rethink on these changes that represent as a liminal state of the field. The abandoned buildings, ash hills and toxic lakes are the notions of the seemingly temporary and unintentional states of the whole industry of oil shale production, however creating a long term alteration to the environment. These subjects are the evidences of human activities, being inactive in a way because they are abandoned, however also growing because of the active industry, resulting in such liminal states accumulating with a pace slower than the decaying process.
Methods
I want to take these residues accumulating faster than decaying as the notions of liminality in human activities. In response to this, I want to use the two ways I am familiar the most, clay materials and photography, as the methods of reconnecting the seemingly frozen conditions of the slow growth of inorganic matters.
I have never tried using both clay materials and photography together in my works, but I want to try this because I can see the potential of the two media working as a conversation to the intriguing landscapes. I am not really sure about what to do with it, but possible methods are using ash and limestones in the field as clay materials and making prints of photos, using clay materials as chemicals to develop photos or using both media as archiving methods during the field research.