Since my primary aim here, is to make a case for practice, and proccess as research method. Laboratory for those hard scientist among you. I though I would share, a recent presentation and workshop I gave in Helsinki, as part of the, °City is sound, city is quicksand° event at Hietsu pavilion! Hosted by the Academy of fine arts, (doctoral program), The university of the Arts Helsinki, and ‘the City a a space of rules and dreaming’ project team. Find out more here
That I think really illustrates not only the role of proccess in developing ideas, but of play, and physical encounters with the world in motion. That can I firmly believe serve to weld theory and practice to one another. But also demonstrates a series of unconnected encounters, discussion spanning across The Johannesburg Highveld, Ireland, the Netherlands, Helsinki, Estonia. both in person, and remote. That enable open ended ideas to percolate..
A Carrie bag approach to urban matter, in the African Anthropocene
My work, emerges as a respond to the perception of ruin, ruination and fragmentation of the urban terrian_ of the city of johannesburg, in the wake the end of minning, and now remaining the dissolution of landscape, and the affects of anthropocentric thinking on the living world. And asked question around how we relay ot materials narratives, in the every day, how do we come to know, and relate to those matters. How do we trouble these narratives that exist around matter in late capitalism?
A gathering of, alter… other ways of knowing about the human, in a world that is, deeply affected by human action, in this moment when, our actions. Threatened Oddkin but also ourselves.
So I turn to think if of stone, as living and active matter, that affects the human world, considering affectivity, against the inertness that is so often presupposed.
We gather around this small pile, and begin with a question, what do you see?
audience response :
natural materials?
stones and sticks?
living matter….?
a pile of suff
trash?
a pile of things gathered here?
I give a pause on the last……
I want to talk today about that which is omitted, that which we forget to discuss in this context of materials and gatherings. Something I omitted in my PhD work also, that is present in this pile. The role of the carrier bag, in weaving understanding.
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On a hot late summer day, I endeavour to circumnavigate a mine tailing, one of the largest and most prominent anthropological undertakings within the city of Johannesburg. Equipped with a carrier bag, a tablespoon, and sandwich zip-lock bags, I plan to gather some soil samples and other gatherings to consider the heap. The walk is truly an anthropological one, wedged between the mine tailings and tar, requiring us to navigate the BRT connection to SOWETO, the South Western bypass highway. Fragile bodies, dwarfed by the scale of infrastructures. The mound takes three hours to circumnavigate, and as we walk, I gather materials and fragments of human actions. Tar, contaminated acrid-smelling mine waste soil, grass, melted car parts, sedimented tailings stone, grass, and plastic, among much else. It is high summer, and despite the deep consequences of its presents , the tailing feels more like grassland veld than waste. The grass is high in places, and birds chirping are heard between the cars’ whoosh. As I walk and collect, I think about the post-mining city’s ‘Terror’ (Soil of the place), how it is anlterd over time, and what fragments of human presence remain. I imagine what will remain in the geological record of the deep future, thinking of the urban terrains, ‘longue durée’ [1].
But also what will not persist: the intangible complexity of the human intervention and the living world’s relentless persistence despite man’s desire to control it: the sounds of wind in the grass, birds chirping, and cars whooshing. Pondering on The persistence of the human desire to gather as a way of knowing the world in this ancient landscape.
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Gathering and weaving practice:
What have I been up to recently? Are you wondering? In the post-doctoral land, in the way that I work, I suppose I’m in a gathering phase, something about weathering, the weather, and breathing in this altered atmosphere, of mine tailings, re-mining.
They may seem to be somewhat unrelated things. Nevertheless, in the turn of my mind, they are all intricately connected. Are they all about questions of place and time, the Anthropocene, the material world and deep futures… my also yes. I return again and again to my core questions what is it about the way we relating to the living world that makes us destroy it? In what ways can we imagine, of knowing, relating and making within that might allow us to make better decisions. But yet I gather.
So far, I have gathered mine tailings sand and various detritus in circumnavigating a mine dump, campus brick-a-brack, 90 days of cloud photographs, and some cyanotype prop types for this project, Photographs from multiple trips. A clearer sense of moving and breathing around the shifting terrains of Johannesburg’s disappearing mine tailings, is emerging.
Gathering as a praxis is a certain approach which looks like chaos from the outside. But carries a kind of internal logic know only to the artist. Carrying on an autotelic practice, beyond childhood, into adulthood. Taking the gathering of things, ideas, thoughts and reflection which are by there nature done for their own sake, into something that makes new connections, revealing the unseen, creating the emergent way of countering inertness in material centered and lead practices.
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Over the past years, my work has concerned itself with countering terrain vauge by considering the vital materiality of the post-mining city. Gathering, collecting, thinking and aggregating materials in various ways have long formed the basis of my encounter through urban arts research.
Over this time, I have moved a surprising amount of matter in the process of coming to know, and move through to the city. I think of gathering as praxis, and way of knowing. With gathering, comes an obvious observation, the great variety of ways one can devise to move these gatherings. A carrier bag, a hat, a sock, back pack, a car boot, a pickup truck, one’s arms, a card board box, a pocket to name a few of the ways in which I have collected and carried my various gatherings, stones twigs and so on. What of carrier bags and relating.
Ursula Leguin, and Carrie fisher, remind us that, it …
“If you haven’t got something to put it in, food will escape you–even something as uncombative and unresourceful as an oat.(leguin).
Contrary to the idea of man the hunter, rethinking human evolution through the feminine lense, has lead anthropologist to the conclusion that:
The first cultural device was probably a recipient …. Many theorizers feel that the earliest cultural inventions must have been a container to hold gathered products and some kind of sling or net carrier.
So says Elizabeth Fisher in Women’s Creation (McGraw-Hill, 1975).
Fisher suggests that the carrier bag, becomes the primary way of knowing the land, the ability to go out and find out things and return to, tell others about that knowing the principledriver of culture,and relating to the world. Rather than know through hunting, knowing through gathering, is a much older evolutionarily driver.. Gathering is the thing which makes us human, this untold story of gathering, up things both beautiful and mundane things, useful things and potatoes. Is that deeply feminine action of going out to face the world, with a bag, net, leaf, box or receptacle of some kind. It is that feminine action of weaving, sewing, a receptacle and going out with that receptacle to know. Which binds us, to the natural world. In complex ways.
As an architect and fine artist, I explore ways of knowing and thinking about the agency of matter within urban scapes. The fragmentary materials found within urban terrains tell us a great deal about the agency of the urban scapes. In this practice, I explore think of the materials within cities as vital matters. Gathering collect fragments of materials while navigating terrains and aggregating them into bricolage assemblages, which can be thought of as a way of writing a material score, a way of listening to the city through matter.
In this work, I attempt to weave these two ideas together, gathering and carrying become, primary method of knowing, the urban though touch, while aggregating, the term I developed, to describe this method, is aimed at removing to some extent, the human agency in the works, in other works aggregations take the from of piles, that aim to challenge our relationship to the materials we find in the post-extractive urban contexts. Employing actions such as throwing, rolling and other movable actions that enable the matter to continue to act.
In this project, I attempt to think about the fragmentary,” human, matter” that remains in the urban landscape after the humans have left. Attempting to through these works to observe what the human relation to land is, developing an urban sounding as I do so. Imagining the material, terrain into the deep future.
As such, how can this intertwining, method of knowing, be harnessed, to developer a femanist, way of relating to matter in the post-extractive trains. .
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What does gathering have to go with knowing? And Mapping Urban experiences as rich, enmeshed knowings?
Gathering, carrying and aggregating, over the last years, in developing my artistic practice, in indevoring to learn ways of knowing the Urban mater of post extractive terrains, I have engaged in a practice of gathering, matter as method of knowing, gathering, gathering even the smallest amount of matter requires a receptical, a carrier bag, a back pack, A suitcase. Or in some cases in my work a truck, or a pocket.
Any amount of gathering requires carrying, a process of tangling and enmeshing,
Which if done with care in the artists studio leads to, material knowing.
Having recently having completed a large multi year project, I once again find myself Gatling,
How can we think about this method as writing an urban score:
As an architect and fine artist, I explore ways of knowing and thinking about the agency of matter within urban scapes. The fragmentary materials found within urban terrains tell us a great deal about the agency of the urban scapes. In this practice, I explore think of the materials within cities as vital matters. Gathering collect fragments of materials while navigating terrains and aggregating them into bricolage assemblages, which can be thought of as a way of writing a material score, a way of listening to the city through matter.
In this practice, while you walk and listen to the sounds of the city, for those of you who would like to play along, I would like to ask you, to listen to the materials of the city, as you walk, gather any fragments you may find interesting,
When we return you may make an aggregation, a bricklolage of what you find.
Ask yourself some questions:
what do these fragments, say about the city, what do they say about how we think about the city as a urban terrain, do we think of it as, living an active or as inert?
What do we find? Are the fragments natural or man made?
Think about these, in relation to deep pasts and deep futures? What do you think will remain in the long term fossils record
The Artworks presented : + 1 created at the time :
Bio :
Brigitta Stone-Johnson (Brigs)- is an Architect, Fine artist and gardener who lives in Johannesburg, South Africa. She has been a lecturer and creative practice researcher at the Wits School of Architecture since 2016. Her research is located in Environmental Humanities,Her PhD research and creative practice consider vital materiality and the Anthropocene through collaborations with more than human oddkin, such as local stone, tar, rubble and plastic, in post-extractive urban terrains. Her PhD entitled ‘The Botany of Stone’, focuses on stone as a vibrant social matter in the post-extractive urban terrains of Johannesburg. She is a mix-practice artist and maker whose work ranges in scale from building and landscape design to sculptural works in building rubble, tar, concrete, and local stone. As well as cyanotype and photographic processes, on paper and canvas, together with digital filmic and 3D artwork
Find out more at
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