Soil Stories
2024
Mixed media Research Creation Project.
Print, video, soil bio-composite tiles
Soil Stories is the product of a collaboration between multidisciplinary artist and designer Anna Noel and critical geographer Melody Lynch. The project began in January 2024 and was supported by the Concordia Undergraduate Student Research Award from May - August 2024. The project is ongoing.
Presentation view from Concordia Undergraduate Student Research Award Symposium, October 4, 2024.
Soil Stories follows the pathway of soil sampled from urban agricultural plots in Kuching, Malaysia. This project expands on our research about embodied experiences with urban cultivation. We conducted an ethnographic investigation into the emotional, spiritual and cultural connections with cultivation, and collected small samples of soils that we tested for heavy metal contamination. After these tests, the soils could no longer be used for agricultural purposes, but they still held significant stories about the land. Through an approach that combines experimental geography, decolonial research and artistic exploration, we developed this multidisciplinary project to explore how cultivation enables diverse forms of caring for people and their environments–what we term ‘socioecological care’. We extend our investigation into practices of socioecological care by repurposing materials no longer useful for science–otherwise viewed as waste–into art. Through artistic inquiry and design, we expand our understanding of the stories that these soils can share. This project highlights the relational value generated through practices of urban cultivation. We extend and create new relational values with soils in artistic contexts.
Tiles made using discarded soil and agar agar. Using field data about the plots of land in the study, we know which types of plants were grown in each plot. For each tile, we used a plant that the soil had grown and imprinted it in the soil-agar agar mixture as it was solidifying. These tiles hold a visual memory of what the soil once grew. The tiles are organized in rows corresponding to their plant. From left to right: aloe and corn, durian, rambutan, lemongrass, chili, turmeric, pineapple, coconut, dragonfruit, and mango.
It is not often that within the arts, we know the exact origin of the materials we work with and who has worked with them before. Unless we produce our own unique materials or intentionally work closely with producers of natural materials, the origins of our works are unknown.
With Soil Stories, we have worked directly with urban cultivators who work and care for their land plots and gardens. Through interviews and fieldwork, we learned about the connections that Kuchingites have with the land.
With the intention of extending the life of the soils, we embarked on multiple forms of creative exploration. We explored the soils though our senses, photography, video and object creation. It is important to us to consider the stories already held in the soils while creating new stories with these artistic explorations. The initial research and knowledge of the urban cultivators is valued on the same level as the knowledge learned from the material explorations.
Art and design can be catalysts for alternative, decolonial ways of engaging with materials from geographic research to reconcile human-environment relations.
The materials that make up our physical built environments - that have been conditioned and transformed to serve human instrumental needs - have a natural origin that must be acknowledged and respected. The instrumental needs of humans, as well as the intrinsic value of the material to exist rightfully on its own as an integral part of the earth, combine to create the interconnected relational value of humans with nature. We cannot be separated from the natural materials that build us.
The heavy metal toxicity, mindfulness, emotion, and history cannot be seen from a first glance. Just as the heavy metals are an invisible form of pollution, the power and meaning held in these soils are invisible. It takes further inquiry, intention and care to make these aspects visible. They’re only invisible until one makes the conscious choice to open up the possibilities to share them.
As artists and producers, it is important to consider the full life span of the art we create. We need to consider the end of life of a creation as thoroughly as the birth of it. We must create with sustainability and the lifecycle of natural materials in mind.
Consider the ways in which we consider material waste and care with the materials we all have the privilege of experiencing. Of looking beyond what’s at face value, and looking into the socio-natural contexts of our resources and how we can use alternative and interdisciplinary frameworks to reconsider the place of materials and technical research in our lives. By using artistic research, both as a way of personal exploration and self-reflection and as a method of idea-sharing with others, the multiplicities of care can be deepened and our respect to the environment and the personal experiences of working with the environment better understood.
We photographed each sample in a petri dish before turning them into tiles. The video above displays the variety of natural colour and texture of the soils.
Using a digital microscope, we captured the soil samples from a view naturally imperceivable to the human eye. This view is usually invisible, similarly to how the heavy metals are invisible in the soils.
Many interview respondents reported feeling senses of calmness and mindfulness while tending to their gardens. The method of slow focus shifting and microscopic videography mirrors these senses, with the aim of bringing focus to the material and allowing space for reflection on the soil.
This method of visualization also recontextualizes the soil from being a usable and productive material to being one that is purely aesthetically beautiful. Soil is typically only used in gardening and food production. The samples have been removed from their original contexts and can no longer serve that purpose, so in what other ways are they perceived?