Uncategorised – Page 3 – THINKING RESEARCH

in the future, as we move towards new energy systems we will perhaps find new ways to understand our relationship with extraction practices. the carbonscape is visibly embedded in the UK’s landscape and pose an opportunity to reengage with the planets metabolism and the way in which it transforms what humans categorise as waste into what the non human deam as a resourse.

due to the content of these hills they have their own temporal transition from the ecologies around them and through their own time frame, transform and effect the nature cultures they are placed within. from these sites of indirect extraction emerge different scales of non-human colonisation and different forms of vibrancy and volatility.

humans construct concepts of material waste whilst also committing cultural waste in the process. the concept of wasting something is ignoring its actor network and its potential to produce stories that may help form new understandings for the future.

the act of extraction is here reenacted by the individual through the process of walking and archiving. the scavenger evolves into the expert extractor of both the tangible and the intangible, the physical and the cultural….

sitting next to coal

i return often to the spoil hear, my chosen site of information extraction, in order to think and sit and wonder and be.

on a particularly beautiful afternoon, i was sat next to a fallen tree which had brought with its routes and abundance of spoil content exposed – that which was previously concealed by the very thin layer of misleading top soil. the natural processes of a large tree falling over had exposed the spoil contest and drew me too it. here a found an abundance of the slates and mudstones that the spoil is typically made ups from

then

i saw a glistening rock…

I brought it home and me and my brother pondered what it could be… eventually we deduced it might be tar and even a petro chemical plastic of sorts …

I decided to go back to the site again and EXTRACT my own resource.

(the dig)

I collect rock samples from 4 sites.

I collected every leaf I could find growing on the spoil and scanned them in at 1200 dpi when I got home:

common holly (ilex)
crumpy plumeless thistle (carduus crispus)
elmleaf blackberry (rubus ulmifolius) (fungi – pharagmidiaceae)
hard shield fern (polystichum)
italian arum (arum italicum)
lesser burdock (arctium)

common holly (ilex)
crumpy plumeless thistle (carduus crispus)
elmleaf blackberry (rubus ulmifolius) (fungi – pharagmidiaceae)
hard shield fern (polystichum)
italian arum (arum italicum)
lesser burdock (arctium)

common holly (ilex)
crumpy plumeless thistle (carduus crispus)
elmleaf blackberry (rubus ulmifolius) (fungi – pharagmidiaceae)
hard shield fern (polystichum)
italian arum (arum italicum)
lesser burdock (arctium)
primrose (primula veris)
stinging nettle (urtica dioica)
top left – dogd mecury (mercuralis perennis) bottom left – winegrape (vitis vinifera), bottom right – elderberry (sambucus nigra)