One metric tonne of topsoil covers the floor, penetrated by ceramic vessels and pipes. Adaptable and resilient plants, colonise, emerge... Read More
One metric tonne of topsoil covers the floor, penetrated by
ceramic vessels and pipes. Adaptable and resilient plants, colonise, emerge and
extend their tendrils into the ground. The result of a drift in conversation
between the World Soil Archive and Catalogue and Octavia Butler’s Xenogenesis
trilogy, this work explores soil as a boundary or interfacial layer. The work
juxtaposes soil as the living skin of the earth with the walls that contain
soil within an archive or institution. The interface is a liminal or threshold
condition that both delimits the space for a kind of inhabitation and opens up
otherwise unavailable phenomena, conditions, situations, and territories for
exploration, use, participation and exploitation. Oscillating between the real
and the imaginary, and between past, present and future, Dawn explores the
porosity of spaces, re(imagines) nature and suggests a radical permeability of
the world - an entanglement of flesh and matter - beyond living.
These conversations between people, places, materials and
objects, through the lens of pre-figurative politics, allow for reflection on
geographies of the future and the role of institutions in how counter-futures
are constructed, discussed, imagined, lived, and defended.