MINING MINING
Ideology, Representation and Critical Spatial Practice.
Publication: Essay
‘Critical Practices in Architecture: the Unexamined’ The Arts, Design and Culture in Cities Series
Edited by Jonathan Bean, Susannah Dickinson, Aletheia Ida
Cambridge Scholars Publisher, 2020
Abstract:
Drawing from research methodologies provided by the field of Critical Spatial Practice, this paper examines the ways architectural practice can indeed operate critically, but also instrumentally, in order to uncover, reflect upon, and communicate some of the most pressing issues of our time: the Anthropocene, global warming, big data, and late-capitalism.
This paper is propelled by the urgent need to find successful modes of representation to articulate these issues and communicate their impact on the world. In order to do so we focus on the reprised role of coal mining in the contemporary political landscape of Australia, as a pressing example of these kinds of complex and mammoth issues. In order to parse and clarify the ramifications of coal mining we develop the term Mining Ideology to describe the enmeshing of historic, mythic and political issues with economic and material ones, in the shaping of national identity. In order to deconstruct this new term, we look to New Materialist philosophies as described by Graham Harman and Timothy Morton. We pin-point two issues of central concern in this argument through which we may understand both the field of Mining Ideology and the ability of architecture to engage with it, that of scale and violence.
In examining the particular capabilities of the discipline, our interest is not simply in forms of aesthetic representation, but in the ways communication (as a form of engagement) can be employed to mobilise action.
