[link & images below ︎︎︎]
History is a composition of recollected facts, the reading of those traces that allow one to tell stories, narratives, and events in the most possible comprehensive way. However, there is a degree of interpretation of those pieces of evidence that influences an objective reconstruction of those signs.
Often cultural knowledge and experience generate assumptions in the way one analyses what one is facing, and biases are therefore translated in the way the recorded events are read and perceived. By looking at rocks through different aspects of documenting the interrelation between human and natural environment (non-human), the inquiry explores and focuses on two main generative patterns: from one side the rise of geontology, which gives a reading of human history from a non-human perspective, and on the other hand, the influence of rocks in human culture, their representation and related productions.
The examples explored exemplify different approach to documentation and reconstruction of human history from both a methodological point of view - including non-human participation into it, as well as a multiple perspective from the very human point of view - reflecting over notions such as civilisation, colonisation, exploration and knowledge production.
media: Archival historical photographies and handwritten annotations.
*developed in collaboration with Valeria Fabiano, DAE Alumni.
**(full archive & essay here)
the Critical Inquiry Lab, Design Academy Eindhoven
Eindhoven, The Netherlands, 2020.
Fig 01:
Oc,G.T.1477; Series: Katherine Routledge - Mana Expedition 1913-1915; © The Trustees of the British Museum (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)
Fig 02:
Oc, G.T.1477; Series: Katherine Routledge - Mana Expedition 1913-1915; © The Trustees of the British Museum (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)
Fig 03:
Oc,G.T.1477; Series: Katherine Routledge - Mana Expedition 1913-1915; © The Trustees of the British Museum (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)
Fig 04:
Oc,G.T.1477; Series: Katherine Routledge - Mana Expedition 1913-1915; © The Trustees of the British Museum (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0
Fig 05:
Oc,G.T.1477; Series: Katherine Routledge - Mana Expedition 1913-1915; © The Trustees of the British Museum (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)
Fig 06:
Oc,G.T.1477; Series: Katherine Routledge - Mana Expedition 1913-1915; © The Trustees of the British Museum (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)