Turning Toward (The Space of a Name, a Grain, a Waterdrop)

Abstract

This practice-led research integrates spatial disciplines of jewellery, documentation, and installation. These modes of practice work to establish sea, atmosphere, and cosmos as more-than-human collaborators. The inquiry draws attention to their vast scales by materialising them in macro-structures (a grain of salt, a waterdrop). As a queer practice, witnessing opens worlds by making their intangible scales physical. Jewellery objects seed weathering events into otherwise paralysed architecture through ritualising, fluxing, and scaling methods. They operate as a bridge between body and building and emerge as biorhythm amplifying documents. A seeding methodology turns architecture towards ephemeral matter, reorienting and opening to the mercurial forces they attempt to keep out. This site-writing engages two primary locations: a seaside architectural workplace and biblical sister cities. Between them, their histories set in motion an affectionate turn toward objects, determining inexplicable life within them. Each site documents a life-sustaining, mutual affinity between salt, water, sea, and non-human (m)others.

How might intangible, more-than-human scales be made into physical ‘documents’ through an object-based spatial practice? Could thinking through the scale of a waterdrop or grain of salt queer architectural fixity and reorient how we design, enter, and seed alternate rhythms within built environments?