GMU:Re-enchanting the field/Sara Karimi - Revision history

Sara.Karimi at 15:59, 2 May 2025

2025-05-02T15:59:12Z

← Older revision		Revision as of 15:59, 2 May 2025
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	The anticipated outcome is a fragmented narrative in the form of a series of postcards, each containing field notes, data sketches, overheard stories, and personal letters that will be sent back to my home address in Vienna. Each card serves both as a piece of the archive and a point of reflection. What happens to ethnography when it is mailed, when it travels? What kind of archive moves, and what kind of knowledge is allowed to be partial, poetic, and provisional? Perhaps the ghost towns offer an answer. Perhaps this is the only kind of archive they allow.		The anticipated outcome is a fragmented narrative in the form of a series of postcards, each containing field notes, data sketches, overheard stories, and personal letters that will be sent back to my home address in Vienna. Each card serves both as a piece of the archive and a point of reflection. What happens to ethnography when it is mailed, when it travels? What kind of archive moves, and what kind of knowledge is allowed to be partial, poetic, and provisional? Perhaps the ghost towns offer an answer. Perhaps this is the only kind of archive they allow.



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	Inspired by Mail Art and the ''Dear Data'' project (Lupi & Posavec, 2016), each day I will compose one or more postcards and letters in response to the score. These postcards become both creative responses and data artifacts, serving as archival entries. Each card will mark a trace in relation to the ghost landscapes and at the end of the journey, I will post these postcards and letters back to my home address in Vienna, allowing the archive to travel alongside me.		Inspired by Mail Art and the ''Dear Data'' project (Lupi & Posavec, 2016), each day I will compose one or more postcards and letters in response to the score. These postcards become both creative responses and data artifacts, serving as archival entries. Each card will mark a trace in relation to the ghost landscapes and at the end of the journey, I will post these postcards and letters back to my home address in Vienna, allowing the archive to travel alongside me.

Sara.Karimi: /* Background Info */

2025-05-02T15:58:49Z

Background Info

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	~~======~~ Background Info ~~======~~		'''<big>Background Info</big>'''

	Driven by the landscape of ghost towns and ash mountains, what I refer to as ghost materials, my project aims to make the invisible visible, revealing the hidden narratives embedded in these memory sites. Traces of the oil-shale industry mark the landscape of Ida-Virumaa: hills and holes, waste and pollution (Mildeberg, 2024), like wounds on the body of the land, socio-cultural scars that encode histories of labor, exploitation, and abandonment. But they also gesture toward a possible future, one in which humankind has vanished from the earth.		Driven by the landscape of ghost towns and ash mountains, what I refer to as ghost materials, my project aims to make the invisible visible, revealing the hidden narratives embedded in these memory sites. Traces of the oil-shale industry mark the landscape of Ida-Virumaa: hills and holes, waste and pollution (Mildeberg, 2024), like wounds on the body of the land, socio-cultural scars that encode histories of labor, exploitation, and abandonment. But they also gesture toward a possible future, one in which humankind has vanished from the earth.

	“Ghosts remind us that we live in an impossible present, a time of rupture, a world haunted with the threat of extinction” (Tsing et al., 2017, p. G7). In these abandoned territories, every corner, every piece of stone carries a fragment of collective memory, shared between materials and men. Entering these lands means becoming part of the dynamic of remembering and forgetting, as the landscape is built up as much from the strata of memory as from the layers of rock (Schama, as cited in Printsmann, 2012).		“Ghosts remind us that we live in an impossible present, a time of rupture, a world haunted with the threat of extinction” (Tsing et al., 2017, p. G7). In these abandoned territories, every corner, every piece of stone carries a fragment of collective memory, shared between materials and men. Entering these lands means becoming part of the dynamic of remembering and forgetting, as the landscape is built up as much from the strata of memory as from the layers of rock (Schama, as cited in Printsmann, 2012).

	~~======~~ Main Focus and Anticipated Outcomes ~~======~~
	An outsider, a so-called researcher, lives a life of displacement. She arrives by plane and ship to a wounded land, marked by industrial decay. In this scarred terrain, she wanders through ash mountains and ghost towns, searching for stories buried beneath layers of silence. Of course, she eats lunch, sleeps, and thinks about her family, now even farther away. What she hears are echoes of a forgotten past, resonating through the filter of her own personal history.		<big>'''Main Focus and Anticipated Outcomes'''</big>

			An outsider, a so-called researcher, lives a life of displacement. She arrives by plane and ship to a wounded land, marked by industrial decay. In this scarred terrain, she wanders through ash mountains and ghost towns, searching for stories buried beneath layers of silence. Of course, she eats lunch, sleeps, and thinks about her family, now even farther away. What she hears are echoes of a forgotten past, resonating through the filter of her own personal history.

	For this brief period, she attempts to become an ''ethnographic scavenger'', gathering fragments of memory, material, and meaning from the ruins. But what can truly be gathered in a place where so much has already been taken or erased? What does it mean to listen to a land that no longer speaks in full sentences, only in residue and rust?		For this brief period, she attempts to become an ''ethnographic scavenger'', gathering fragments of memory, material, and meaning from the ruins. But what can truly be gathered in a place where so much has already been taken or erased? What does it mean to listen to a land that no longer speaks in full sentences, only in residue and rust?
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	'''Tools, Method, Process'''

			'''<big>Tools, Method, Process</big>'''

	Scavenger ethnography refers to a personal and interdisciplinary approach in which the researcher, often guided by autobiography, gathers data from diverse and unconventional sources, sometimes through informal or marginal methods, in order to understand those who live outside the boundaries of the norm (Blackman, as cited in Mildeberg, 2024).		Scavenger ethnography refers to a personal and interdisciplinary approach in which the researcher, often guided by autobiography, gathers data from diverse and unconventional sources, sometimes through informal or marginal methods, in order to understand those who live outside the boundaries of the norm (Blackman, as cited in Mildeberg, 2024).
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	'''References'''

			'''<big>References</big>'''

	Lupi, G., & Posavec, S. (2016). ''Dear Data''. Princeton Architectural Press.		Lupi, G., & Posavec, S. (2016). ''Dear Data''. Princeton Architectural Press.

Sara.Karimi: Created page with "====== Background Info ====== Driven by the landscape of ghost towns and ash mountains, what I refer to as ghost materials, my project aims to make the invisible visible, revealing the hidden narratives embedded in these memory sites. Traces of the oil-shale industry mark the landscape of Ida-Virumaa: hills and holes, waste and pollution (Mildeberg, 2024), like wounds on the body of the land, socio-cultural scars that encode histories of labor, exploitation, and abandonm..."

2025-05-02T15:56:56Z

Created page with "====== Background Info ====== Driven by the landscape of ghost towns and ash mountains, what I refer to as ghost materials, my project aims to make the invisible visible, revealing the hidden narratives embedded in these memory sites. Traces of the oil-shale industry mark the landscape of Ida-Virumaa: hills and holes, waste and pollution (Mildeberg, 2024), like wounds on the body of the land, socio-cultural scars that encode histories of labor, exploitation, and abandonm..."

New page

====== Background Info ======
Driven by the landscape of ghost towns and ash mountains, what I refer to as ghost materials, my project aims to make the invisible visible, revealing the hidden narratives embedded in these memory sites. Traces of the oil-shale industry mark the landscape of Ida-Virumaa: hills and holes, waste and pollution (Mildeberg, 2024), like wounds on the body of the land, socio-cultural scars that encode histories of labor, exploitation, and abandonment. But they also gesture toward a possible future, one in which humankind has vanished from the earth.

“Ghosts remind us that we live in an impossible present, a time of rupture, a world haunted with the threat of extinction” (Tsing et al., 2017, p. G7). In these abandoned territories, every corner, every piece of stone carries a fragment of collective memory, shared between materials and men. Entering these lands means becoming part of the dynamic of remembering and forgetting, as the landscape is built up as much from the strata of memory as from the layers of rock (Schama, as cited in Printsmann, 2012).

====== Main Focus and Anticipated Outcomes ======
An outsider, a so-called researcher, lives a life of displacement. She arrives by plane and ship to a wounded land, marked by industrial decay. In this scarred terrain, she wanders through ash mountains and ghost towns, searching for stories buried beneath layers of silence. Of course, she eats lunch, sleeps, and thinks about her family, now even farther away. What she hears are echoes of a forgotten past, resonating through the filter of her own personal history.

For this brief period, she attempts to become an ''ethnographic scavenger'', gathering fragments of memory, material, and meaning from the ruins. But what can truly be gathered in a place where so much has already been taken or erased? What does it mean to listen to a land that no longer speaks in full sentences, only in residue and rust?

The motivation behind this project is to explore how memory and place interact, particularly in ghost towns, through the lens of gaps and absences, holes and hills. How does the absence of miners, who once built their lives around the oil-shale industry, make itself felt in the hollowed-out cities they left behind? Are these absences merely spatial, or do they resonate more deeply, as psychological ruptures, sonic voids, or architectural scars? And how do landscapes grieve or resist the histories forcibly inscribed upon them, like tulips blooming in ash? Those tulips become something more than flowers. They are acts of quiet resistance, finding their fertilizer in the ghost of another material, feeding on industrial ruins. Their presence stutters something to us.

These acts form an evolving archive of memory, shaped by both personal encounter and communal erasure. In this archive, what comes into play are the layers of history that manifest themselves in the landscape in the form of holes and gaps, but also as a certain form of resistance.

The anticipated outcome is a fragmented narrative in the form of a series of postcards, each containing field notes, data sketches, overheard stories, and personal letters that will be sent back to my home address in Vienna. Each card serves both as a piece of the archive and a point of reflection. What happens to ethnography when it is mailed, when it travels? What kind of archive moves, and what kind of knowledge is allowed to be partial, poetic, and provisional? Perhaps the ghost towns offer an answer. Perhaps this is the only kind of archive they allow.

'''Tools, Method, Process'''

Scavenger ethnography refers to a personal and interdisciplinary approach in which the researcher, often guided by autobiography, gathers data from diverse and unconventional sources, sometimes through informal or marginal methods, in order to understand those who live outside the boundaries of the norm (Blackman, as cited in Mildeberg, 2024).

This methodology shapes my approach from the very beginning. Departing from Vienna, I will enact a series of scores, structured prompts or performative instructions, that guide my daily practice. Each score leads to a form of collection:

* taking photographs
* writing narratives
* reshaping maps
* gathering found objects
* recording traces from ghost landscapes

Inspired by Mail Art and the ''Dear Data'' project (Lupi & Posavec, 2016), each day I will compose one or more postcards and letters in response to the score. These postcards become both creative responses and data artifacts, serving as archival entries. Each card will mark a trace in relation to the ghost landscapes and at the end of the journey, I will post these postcards and letters back to my home address in Vienna, allowing the archive to travel alongside me.

'''References'''

Lupi, G., & Posavec, S. (2016). ''Dear Data''. Princeton Architectural Press.

Mildeberg, S. (2024). ''A post-industrial ‘adventure land?’ Challenges for cultural tourism development in the Estonian oil shale region''.

Printsmann, A. (2012). ''The land of oil shale: A cultural landscape of post-industrial Estonia''. In A. Palang & G. Sooväli-Sepping (Eds.), ''Cultural landscapes of Europe: Fields of Demeter'' (pp. 263–274). Landscape and Immaterial Heritage Working Group.

Tsing, A. L., Swanson, H., Gan, E., & Bubandt, N. (2017). ''Introduction: Haunted Landscapes of the Anthropocene''. In A. L. Tsing, H. Swanson, E. Gan, & N. Bubandt (Eds.), ''Arts of Living on a Damaged Planet: Ghosts of the Anthropocene''(pp. G1–G14). University of Minnesota Press.