REFLECTING ON MY PRACTICE IN THE FRAME OF THE PGMPC

Introduction

The project Voicing the soil in Herefordshire during the Anthropocene epoch is about soil. It is shaped by a geological metaphor and centres on a map of soils, showing the influences shaping soil from mesofauna to the United Nations.

Based on a C19 geological cross-section by the geologist William Smith, the map runs from Snowdonia to London via Hereford. The research enquiry for Voicing the Soil looks at the following points:

•       Critically addressing the new geological epoch (the Anthropocene) in Herefordshire

•       Focusing on the new layer of soil added to Herefordshire Old Red Sandstone.

•       Finding out what voices there are in this layer

•       What social, cultural and political forces shape this new geological epoch?

•       In all the outcomes, when dealing with places and people, Lucy Lippard’s Eight Ethical Principles (1997) inspired me and became part of the outcomes generated.

In this practice-led research, although the above points look ‘tidy’, in fact procedures and methods were emergent, haphazard and sometimes chaotic. As planned, the research produced information through interviewing participants. Yet knowledge was imparted also by ‘l’inframince’ which ‘stretches the limits of articulation’ (Duchamp, The Creative Act, 1957). Knowledge I drew from the interviews was somehow affected by places where participants were happy to meet. For example to talk about his farm, soil and farming, a Herefordshire Councillor chose to meet in the building associated with his official function (Herefordshire council building). How can I account for the way this affected the knowing: a category labelled Learning by Osmosis? How could this be measured as an outcome?  As Irit Rogoff suggests ‘we have been adamant in (…) insisting that each project needs to develop its own methodology and its own structure’ (2010, p 37).

In this spirit, the field work conducted where I live, recording interviews, developed its own structure and wove together subjective experience and facts. Although the format of the interview is included in the Method section of my initial project proposal, Will Edwards’ dairy cows fell in love with the sound recorder’s machine (Perry Walker) and the interview format fell apart. Later, the recorder broke down in a pub when meeting Tim Monckton, the soil biologist, who came back for a meal at mine, where I forgot to record him but enjoyed being together. I felt amateurish and wondered how much value our meeting had? 

Collaborators: artist-fabricators who author the project and sign as JUST DUST