Reconciling Carboniferous Accretions: A Performative Script

Abstract

Reconciling Carboniferous Accretions: A Performance Script is a spatial writing text that sets the scene for a site-specific performance at The North of England Institute of Mining and Mechanical Engineers (NEIMME) in Newcastle upon Tyne, UK. Like any script, the text anticipates the possibility of multiple performances, and yet when augmented visually by sketches, photographs and dialogue, the script recalls one version of what did happen at its only performance to date as part of the Architecture and Humanities Research Association’s (AHRA) Industries of Architecture conference in November 2014. The artwork advocates for coal as a live material caught up amongst material–corporeal relations, an approach that emerges from of the philosophies of Luce Irigaray, Donna Haraway, Jane Bennett and Elizabeth Grosz. The performance proceeds as a love poem to coal, a recitation that poses a radical encounter with geological processes, opencast mining practices and a red-carpeted room in NEIMME set aside for coalmining conciliations and Freemason meetings.