An Unfinished Compendium of Materials Edited by Rachel Harkness ISBN: 978-1-85752-060-6 Published by the University of Aberdeen knowingfromtheinside.org This book has been produced as part of the project: Knowing from the Inside: Anthropology, Art, Architecture and Design funded by the European Research Council (ERC) and hosted at the University of Aberdeen. First Published: Aberdeen, 2017 Design: Neil McGuire / After the News Air Asphalt Beeswax Body Bristol Board Canvas Castors Chi / 气 Clay Concrete Corrugated Cardboard Crackle Glaze Drawings Dust Earth Formaldehyde Fur Glass Ice Iron Ore Japan Blues Light Limestone Linseed Oil Metals Mooseskin Mortar Nylon Paint Paper Plans Peat Pigment Pitch Plant Matter Plasterboard Plastic Polystyrene Red Ochre / Tsaih Reeds Salabardo Salt Sand Shipping Containers Sound Sourdough Stone Tarpaulin Thread Titanium Tracing Paper Transmaterial Turf Water Watercolour WillowFlex Wood Wood Wood 5 10 14 18 24 28 29 32 37 40 45 51 53 59 64 71 72 74 76 84 85 89 92 96 100 104 106 109 110 112 116 122 125 127 131 132 138 144 145 154 160 161 164 170 174 178 182 184 188 191 195 196 202 204 206 208 212 218 Afterword 226 Contributors 227 Limestone Acid test on limestone, C. Simonetti, 2017 transparent and odourless. It remains unnoticed in a sensory climate where seeing is believing and strong smells are associated with precariousness. LIMESTONE Cristián Simonetti This small piece of limestone comes from Ñilhue, a mine owned by Melón, the first company in Chile to mine the material industrially, for the production of cement. Melón’s operations started nearly a century ago in Calera, a town not far from Valparaíso. Calera is famous for its name, which comes from lime (‘cal’ in Spanish), a chemical made by burning limestone at about 1,000°C. As in the production of lime, the stone releases carbon dioxide (CO2) bubbles in reaction to drops of hydrochloric acid, added by the man in charge of mining operations at Ñilhue. This acid test, as it is known among geologists, corroborates the presence of calcium carbonate (CaCO3), a mix of calcium oxide (CaO) – otherwise known as lime – and CO2 that is the main component in limestone. Soon the stone will be burned at even higher temperatures (about 1,500°C), along with small quantities of sand and clay, to produce cement. The melting will take place inside Melón’s kilns at Calera. Powered by coal and natural gas, flames in this type of kiln reach about 1,900°C, one-third of the sun’s surface temperature. At such temperatures, all of the CO2 contained in the stone will be released into the atmosphere, contributing to global warming. Globally, cement production is responsible for between 5 and 10 percent of all carbon emissions. Like the bubbles in the above picture, the CO2 coming out of Melon’s furnaces is both Through the transformations of this small limestone I wish to briefly narrate some of earth’s history, following the lead of generations of geologists who have perfected the skill of seeing the long in the now by paying attention to stones. This practice is often dated back to the publication of Theory of the Earth by James Hutton (1795), who is credited for making the abyss of time, solidified in the masses of the Scottish landscape, flow once again. Hutton was among the first to point out how things were constantly in the making. ‘No vestige of a beginning, no prospect of an end’ was his famous claim. Jan Zalasiewicz offers a recent contemporary example of this skill. As one of the leaders behind the controversial effort to formalize the definition of our current geological epoch – termed the Anthropocene, to signal humans as a leading geological force at the planetary scale – Zalasiewicz (2010) narrates the earth’s history starting from a pebble. Unlike Zalasiewicz, my narrative is not through an ordinary pebble found on a beach, but from an industrially mined stone made of calcium oxide and CO2. Imagine how many planets could be envisioned depending on which stone you pick. Limestone makes up around 10 percent of all sedimentary rocks and is mined almost everywhere in the world. It has varied 92 industrial applications, including most notably the production of steel and cement, perhaps the most indispensable materials in the building of modernity. According to the National Lime Association, comprised of U.S. and Canadian commercial lime companies, we’re talking about ‘the versatile mineral, the building block of construction and human progress that is a fundamental part of your everyday life, whether you realize it or not’.1 Before cement was rediscovered in the eighteenth century, limestone and lime had been used, respectively, as building stone and mortar in construction for over 8,000 years. A versatile material, lime is used in products with countless applications, appearing in many of the things that we now use daily, including industrial materials such as plastic, paper, ink, paint, glass, and rubber, as well as some foods. According to DeLanda’s (1997) A Thousand Years of Non-Linear History, this mineralization has been turned outside in and inside out a number of times during evolution. By burning the exoskeletons of sea critters at high temperatures to produce lime and cement, humans have created their own exoskeletons, to further protect the soft tissue which their endoskeletons support. In doing so, humans have accelerated deep time, fuelled by Promethean illusions. In their furnaces, they have released in an instant carbon accumulated over millennia, turning sedimentary formations into igneous flows. However, these are not the volcanic flows which DeLanda contrasts against sedimentary formations, in dialogue with Deleuze and Guattari’s (1987) famous distinction between rhizomatic and arboreal models of evolution. Unlike the hierarchical view of evolution presented in Darwin’s tree of life, which is modelled on a vertically stratified fossil record contained inside sedimentary rocks, rhizomatic forms and volcanic flows would flatten relations, challenging human exceptionalism. However, our relationship to this piece of limestone extends even further back in time. Caught in an endless exchange of matter and energy, our stories entangle to the very start of life as we know it. Limestone is made of the same stuff that composes our bones. Just like our ancestors, this small limestone came out of the ocean, moved by tectonic forces. It is made of the fossilized skeletons of sea organisms. A process that is still underway, the geological formation of limestone dates back 542 million years to a sudden increase in the concentration of calcium in the earth’s oceans, possibly triggered by a combination of erosion and volcanic activity. This calcium concentration resulted in a process of mineralization (skeletonization) in organisms from the so-called Cambrian explosion, where essentially all mayor animal phyla appeared in the fossil record and which subsequently led to the appearance of our vertebrate ancestors, who slowly crawled out of the oceans. In the words of Rachel Carlson, ‘our lime-hardened skeletons are a heritage from the calcium-rich ocean of Cambrian time’ (1950: 13-14). Like sea organisms, we humans are also somewhat lime-creatures. 1 In a totally contrasting mode, modern construction has turned limestone, a sedimentary rock, into an igneous cement, only to turn it back into the ultimate sedimentary layer on top of which the history of modernity is to be written. Concrete’s impermeable surfaces – made of cement, sand and aggregate – have lifted humans above the land while suffocating nature. However, these are only provisory illusions in that no concrete surface is impervious to decay, each one depending on extended practices of care. Given enough time, all solid matter is meant to flow (Harkness et al. 2015). Curiously, the Anthropocene – a word that most scholars in the humanities seem to simultaneously love and hate – resembles how Westerners have played God in their attempts to subdue nature below concrete surfaces. For geoscientists in charge of its formalization, the term stands for yet another layer in earth’s history, placed atop all others in geological charts. This punctuated understanding of chronology is http://lime.org/lime-basics/why-is-limestill-important/ (13 February 2017). 93 Limestone revealed in how most efforts to formalize the Anthropocene have focused on identifying its date of birth (Simonetti 2017). Such an understanding of chronology risks sending into oblivion the much deeper history of the mingling of humans and the inhuman. No doubt we need a fair starting date for the Anthropocene, if we are at all to achieve some sense of environmental responsibility. However, this date should not be baptismal in nature, which would resemble how modernity wishes to place itself above tradition, once and for all. Limestone References Carlson, R. 1950. The Sea Around Us. Oxford: Oxford UP. DeLanda, M. 1997. A Thousand Years of Non-Linear History. Zone Books. Deleuze, G. and Guattari, F. 1987. A Thousand Plateaus, trans. B. Massumi. London: Continuum. Harkness, R., Simonetti, C. and Winter, J. 2015. ‘Liquid Rock: Gathering, Flattening, Curing’. Parallax 76, 309–326. Besides, how much more do we risk in reducing the present to the entanglements produced by one particular species? How many other entanglements beyond the human will be erased if we dare to place ourselves at the centre of the present? What would it be like to write from the viewpoint of shells, instead of humans? Would they consider us relatives, after we have destroyed all remaining coral reefs that still contain/ trap CO2? Ultimately, compressing deep time into a pebble and accelerating deep time in a kiln result from similar infatuations with human ingenuity. Both modern industries and science have been justified based on triumphalist narratives of progress. Hutton, J. 1795. Theory of the Earth with Proofs and Illustrations, vol. I & II. Edinburgh: William Creech. Simonetti, C. 2017. Sentient Conceptualisations. Time in Archaeology. London: Routledge. Zalasiewicz, J. 2010. The Planet in a Pebble: A Journey into Earth’s Deep History. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Patterned tree roots, W.F. Xue, 2011 Give way to the impermanence of surfaces on which modern values stand; challenge the fascination with narrating origin myths and stabilizing periodizations; leave the retrospective emphasis on a single deep past, opening up forward-looking speculations on how deep futures multiply. Hopefully, cracks will open, allowing for entanglements beyond the human to mushroom.2 2 The research behind this chapter has been supported by the projects ‘Solid Fluids in the Anthropocene’ (funded by the British Academy for the Humanities and the Social Sciences), and ‘Concrete Futures’ (funded by Fondo Nacional de Desarrollo Científico y Tecnológico, Chile, Nº 11150278). 94 95 Contributors project. His current interests lie on the interface between anthropology, archaeology, art and architecture. Recent books include The Perception of the Environment (2000), Lines (2007), Being Alive (2011), Making (2013) and The Life of Lines (2015). Paolo Gruppuso is Honorary Research Fellow at the Department of Anthropology of the University of Aberdeen. He is interested in environmental conservation, landscape, agriculture and wetland management. He has conducted ethnographic research in two protected wetlands in Agro Pontino (Italy), on topics including environmental conflicts, water management, and environmental education. Leonidas Koutsoumpos is assistant professor of Theory in Architectural Design at the School of Architecture of the National Technical University of Athens, Greece. His research has been exploring the designing processes through philosophical and ethnomethodological inquiries. He is also practicing architecture through by and constructing projects in various scales. Rachel Harkness is a Lecturer in Design and Screen Cultures at Edinburgh College of Art, University of Edinburgh. Her research and teaching explores architecture and design as a peopled process, pays particular attention to the social life of the materials involved, and considers how people make manifest their ecological designs for living. Valeria Lembo is Honorary Research Fellow at the Department of Anthropology of the University of Aberdeen, where she is carrying out research in collaboration with the project Knowing From the Inside. Her current work is exploring the interplay between breathing, linearity and skilled practice by experimentally engaging with embroidery, singing and movement awareness techniques. Marc Higgin is a research fellow in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Aberdeen. His current research is with visual artists and their practices of making, following the different contexts, each with their own regime of value, through which materials and things are transformed into works of art. Jan Peter Laurens Loovers (Ph.D., Aberdeen, 2012) is an ERC Arctic Domus post-doctoral fellow at the University of Aberdeen. Since 2005 he has been working with Gwich’in in northern Canada on pedagogy, ecology, and dogs, amongst other themes. Jan Peter Laurens Loovers wants to acknowledge the Gwich’in Social and Cultural Institute, Annie Jane Modeste, and Rachel Joy Harkness for their assistance and the community of Fort McPherson for their kindness and teachings. The contributions (Furs, Iron Ore, Mooseskin, and Red Ochre) have been made possible by financial support from the Royal Anthropological Institute’s Urgent Anthropology Fund and the Arctic Domus ERC Advanced Grant. Elizabeth A Hodson is a research affiliate on the project ‘Knowing from the Inside’ based in the Anthropology Department at the University of Aberdeen. Her work focuses on contemporary art and in particular drawing, with a regional interest in Iceland and Scotland. She holds a studio at Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop. Sophie Hueglin is an archaeologist from Germany, who does research on medieval mortar production technologies in England, Switzerland and Italy. More generally, she is interested in the theoretical concept of petrification, a process that for example can be observed in the change from wood to stone in early medieval architecture. Ray Lucas is Head of Architecture at the University of Manchester, and has a PhD in Social Anthropology from the University of Aberdeen; his teaching ranges from studio workshops on Knowledge Production in Architecture to lecture courses on Graphic Tim Ingold is Professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Aberdeen, and Principal Investigator for the ERC-funded Knowing From the Inside 228 Contributors Anthropology. Lucas is author of Research Methods for Architecture (2016), Drawing Parallels (2018), and Anthropology for Architects (2018). Lucas’ current research includes ‘graphic anthropologies’ on marketplaces in South Korea and urban festivals in Japan, describing the informal, social, and iterative architecture through the conventions of architectural drawing. on migratory and marginal worlds as well as visual and textual storytelling. Claire Pençak is a choreographer and dancer whose practice extends beyond the studio and theatre to working in an interdisciplinary context. Her work may materialise as performance, installation, writings from improvisation and place making projects. www.clairepencak.wordpress.com Enrico Marcoré is a PhD candidate for the University of Aberdeen in the ERC project “Knowing from the Inside”. His research focuses on the rebuilding of the L’Aquila province after the 2009 earthquake. Through considering many forms of dwelling arisen from the quake, he wants to explore the role of building in the making of Aquilean post-catastrophic environment. Tanja Romankiewicz first trained as an architect, interested in the people of the past. She is now an archaeologist, interested in how past people created their built environment. Her current project, a Leverhulme Trust Early Career Fellowship at University of Edinburgh, investigates how we can be ‘Building (Ancient) Lives’. Griet Scheldeman, an anthropologist from Belgium, and Doug Benn, a glaciologist from Scotland, met in 2012 on a glacier in Spitsbergen. Since then they have explored their mutual passion for ice, bringing together scientific and artistic perspectives in a holistic appreciation of ‘solid water’ in all its forms. They now live by the sea in Scotland. Francesca Marin is PhD candidate in anthropology at the University of Aberdeen. Her work focuses on interdisciplinary research, collaborative processes, conservation and small-scale fisheries. In Argentina, she works with marine biologists. Beforehand she did fieldwork in Kenya and Cameroon, in collaboration with volcanologists, cartographers and NGO members, studying risk perception, vulnerability and development. Cristián Simonetti is Assistant Professor at the Programa de Antropología, Instituto de Sociología, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile and an Honorary Research Fellow at the Department of Anthropology, University of Aberdeen. His work concentrates on how bodily gestures and environmental forces relate to notions of time in science, the topic of a monograph entitled Sentient Conceptualizations (Routledge, 2017). Germain Meulemans is a PhD candidate in Anthropology at the Universities of Liège and Aberdeen. He is interested in hybrid, anthropogenic environments, and in the challenge they pose to both the natural and the social sciences. Recently, he has been conducting ethnographic research on the topic of urban soils. Christine Moderbacher is an Anthropologist and Documentary Filmmaker. (Harraga 2008, Men at work 2010, A Letter to Mohamed 2013, A Summer in Nigeria (in progress)). She is currently finishing her PhD “CRAFTING LIVES in Brussels - Making and Mobility on the Margins” at the department of Anthropology at the University of Aberdeen, as part of the project KFI Knowing From the Inside. In her films as well as her anthropological work she focuses Erika Akariguame Armengol Sloth has studied social anthropology at Goldsmiths University of London, environmental anthropology at University of Aberdeen and is currently studying development studies at London School of Economics, (where she is working on a research project regarding material cultures in developing countries). 229