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Sara.Karimi (talk | contribs) (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...") |
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'''<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). | ||
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. | ||