Calthemitic Sticky Thinking
MA Contemporary Art & Archaeology, University of the Highlands & Islands Final Project . A project investigating trans-life collaboration with matter as mentor. The matter being Calthemite, a pseudo-karst also known as ‘urban stalactite’ which ‘grows’ under aged concrete urban architectures.
In response to finding pollutive airborne particulate fossilised in calthemite, this study investigated calthemite as ‘archaeologists of airs’, as a creative earth system member potentially able to collaborate and mentor across life worlds. Together we would attempt to unravel their material pasts by tracking down possible sources of the concrete from which they seep.
Through this journey I encountered many different and intersecting flows of matter, minerals and human plastic wastes, evidencing a continuum of matter flows interrupted by human activity which lead me to seek the route of a chalk slurry pipeline that lies 57 miles long between quarry and factory under the surface in the UK Midlands. I decided I wanted to listen and record the turbulent chalk moving steadily through this huge hidden structure.
Jane Bennett’s vital materiality(1) and Mark Fisher’s interpretation of the uncanny(2) combined provided theory to draw the character of weird, creepy and wet lithic agency onto both calthemite and the hidden pipeline and signposted a possible speculative and mystical approach in art archaeology creative practice.
It was important to me to try to practice humility in ecological understanding to navigate different vulnerabilities produced within a trans-life collaboration and uncovering calthemite pasts rather than continue the extractive mindset to minerals that dominate landscapes. So an artwork of 16 awareness cards that sat alongside my searching presence in that landscape seemed appropriate.
1. Bennett, J. (2010) Vibrant Matter: A political ecology of things. Durham: Duke University Press.
2. Fisher, M. (2016) The weird and the eerie. London: Repeater Books