Geofictions combines speculative writing with on site field research to address the relationships between nature, industry, technology and the material imaginaries of place. It brings together geology, art and writing, with an emphasis on creative and critical ‘doing’ through dialogue, experimentation and exchange.

The workshop and associated exhibition at mima (Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art) explores South Gare in the North of England and the now-closed Teesside Steelworks in Redcar, excavating the entangled geo-industrial identities of the area and its ecologies of obsolescence and waste. Through on-site practical tasks and activities, participants ‘read’ South Gare’s landscape, debris and discarded media as part of a new geological stratum, one that evidences items such as electronics and plastic as part of the future fossil record. Fictioning is employed throughout as a method to reimagine where these objects might come from and where they might end up.

Commissioned by mima and located between mima and South Gare, the exhibition ran from March-June 2017 and was part of the 10 year commemoration of mima and was presented in Tania Bruguera’s Office of Useful Art.

Geofictions has been presented at Arts Catalyst, Ambika P3, (London), Art Houses Whitley Bay Film Festival, Postcards from the Anthropocene conference at University of Edinburgh, University of Lodz in Poland and at Writing with Undisciplined Discipline a collaborative project between Seedbox at Linkoping University in Sweden and KTH Stockholm.

mima 10 year anniversary

Publication