Salted Earth
Salted Earth: revealing traces and reconfiguring identities in contested sites of migrant history in 20th Century London
PhD Research by Architectural Design at the Bartlett, University College London
Through the Origination project and residency, I became interested in the idea of 'salted earth', a term used to refer to District 6, an area of Cape Town, South Africa demolished by the Apartheid Government. Subsequent protests made it impossible to sell the land. 'Salted earth' is a reference to emotion carried in the land, places that become loaded with memory, often contested by different communities with different versions of history. Salt as a material overlaps cultures and histories, and has strong links to migration and ritual in different cultures.
In my Masters dissertation (see Links page), I explored the idea of 'healing' place, where through social encounter in the process of place-making, new relationships had been built, thereby constructing new identities of place. Using my experience in community development, and my artistic practice, and looking at others with similar approaches, my current proposal develops this idea at the intersection between art and architecture, exploring modes of 'public' art, and in the process offering critiques of practices of memorialisation.
My research has two main intentions. Firstly, to test a series of practices that interweave art, architecture and narration of place in order to understand how the identity of communities in contested sites of migrant history evolves from particular relationships between present and past, presence and absence. Secondly, to use these practices to uncover traces in specific places, so that as an additional outcome, new forms of knowledge about these sites may be collected which benefit the users of these sites by highlighting their hidden histories to new audiences.
I want to develop intuitive methodologies of practice, in order to understand emotionally contested sites revealed by histories of migration and place making. I will create interventions that propose ways of 'healing', or drawing out emotion. I argue that this provides an opportunity, through social interactions, to assist in developing new identities of place and new networks that are the basis for fresh processes of place-making.
To follow the research process, go to the Salted Earth blog
Image: studio shot of work in progress, January 2011