Situated Knowledges

: Organism, Plantationocene, Bio-Politics

Situated Knowledges: Organism, Plantationocene, Biopolitics is a multidisciplinary and multimedia body of research-based artwork that takes an approach to knowledge production that is less concerned with arriving at definitive outcomes, and is keener to acknowledging the entanglements and fluctuations that arise through working within both conceptual and nonconceptual domains. Terrains and infrastructures across Scotland are mapped and viewed through a semi-fictional lens to actively engage with ecological and technological perspectives and issues.

Specific species found at Drumclog Moor in Milngavie and at two nuclear sites on the West and East Coasts of Scotland are investigated. The abundance of Usnea Subfloridana (Old Man’s Beard Lichen) and Fomes Fomentarius (Horse’s Hoof Fungus) in the vegetatious moor landscape are in contrast to species found at Hunterson B Nuclear Power Station and Torness Nuclear Power Station, where fewer lichens and fungi can be found along with the sparser coastal landscapes.

Lichens are used as bioindicators due to their porous and absorbent structure and can be used to measure toxic elemental pollutants and radioactive metals as they bind these substances in their fungal threads where they concentrate over time. Environmental scientists can then evaluate this accumulation to determine the history of the local air. Considering this information the work investigates the effects that human activity has had on the surrounding environment.

Whilst making site-specific work, the knowledge gathered is threaded into a practice focused on co-subjectivity and one which is in multispecies alliance across the divisions of nature, culture and technology. By way of techno-sensual artistic exploration, the boundaries between human and non-human are blurred. An aesthetically-reflexive interpretation of nature and complex human-made infrastructures, it acts as both a living and representational archive of tacit knowledge derived from the sites and asks: how can the microscopic portrait of Drumclog Moor and the nuclear sites probe human perception of time vs microbial and geological time scales?