Above and below: The sounding of haunted geologies

Abstract

This article investigates uses of sound in contemporary artists’ time-based work in relation to Nils Bubandt’s concept of ‘haunted geologies’. The work of artists and filmmakers such as Ben Rivers, Derek Jarman, Mark Jenkin, Shift Register and Louise K. Wilson is utilized as a means of exploring and enriching the concept of the haunted geological. Combined uses of field recording, post-production and the manipulation of frequencies are examined, as suggestive of affective acts of divination and evocation, which evidence both visual and sonic signification. The visible forms and discrete voids of ‘difficult’ and unquiet locations (in the United Kingdom and Australia) that have been disturbed, unsettled or remain resistant to knowledge provide the focus for a discussion, appertaining both to the realm of the ‘above’ and to the ‘below’. The concept of ghost strata enables a consideration or navigation of that which has been misplaced, providing a useful and productive means for imaginative reflection on the impacts of loss. While suggesting this loss, nonetheless, ghost strata remind us of the persistence of stone as a form of vibrant and sentient matter – providing evidence of material agency which foregrounds and heightens the sense of the destructive nature of the current environment. The potency of materiality is further present in the media utilized to ‘capture’ or co-create phenomena across a variety of scales and states of rock and stone. To this end, the powers of analogue film, audio recorder or hard drive to both document and manifest phenomena are explored as a means of unearthing a recent past of spectrality in the geologic. In this sense, the ghosts that we have created can be seen to foretell of future hauntings in the time of the Anthropocene.