ECOLOGICAL DEVICES:
Contaminant Assemblages Held in Black bodies and Landscapes

Kathryn Yusoff defines the Black Anthropocene as “... predicated on the presumed absorbent qualities of black and brown bodies to take up the body burdens of exposure to toxicities and to buffer the violence of the earth” (Yusoff, 2018: 11). This work seeks to surface the spectrum of contaminants of a biopolitical and sociopolitical nature present in black communities as a result of extractive industries such as mining. This subject is particularly antagonized through the allegory of a ‘micro surface’. Kathryn Yusoff, states, “Blackness is understood as a state of relation…” (Yusoff, 2018:10), thus the micro surface is defined here as the surface at the scale of the micro where the relationships present between the molecules of the black body and ecology, concerning the contaminant consequences of Edendale mining through time, might be rendered visible. The project consists of a series of prototype devices that analyze the existing ecological hauntings through an allegorical science fiction, thus also surfacing racial and social injustices experienced in mining communities.
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Prompted by anthropocentric spatial analysis, an installation of a screen/membrane which unearths and archives the connections between uneven geographies of social injustice and environmental degradation will be constructed (Tsing et al, 2021). These uneven geographies are defined by vulnerable locations in which black/brown bodies are positioned and displaced in such a manner, as described by Kathryn Yusoff as, “…an inhuman proximity organized by historical geographies of extraction, grammars of geology, imperial global geographies, and contemporary environmental racism.” (Yusoff, 2018: 11). Thus, revealing how black bodies buffer white bodies from the contaminants expelled from these geographies of extraction.

Edendale’s lead mining past still haunts its surrounding social and ecological environment and surfaces; itself rendered detectable through spatial frames in the local water, soil, and air of the present-day adjacent township of Mamelodi. The work calls into question the manifestations of contamination, mutation, economic progress, and liability within the affected community of Mamelodi . Through the perspective of the interrelations of waste, economic production, ecology, and community, the work will reveal the contaminants absorbed by the varying bodies inhabiting this community. Therefore, the membrane proposed will possibly further prompt an augmented and altered future ecology narrative of restorative justice, and commentary which may contribute towards discussions of infrastructural care for the urban spaces we inhabit. This will be done, through the lens of Anna Tsing’s concept of assemblage.

Assemblage is defined as, a surface or space of the organic gathering of multispecies, whose diverse encounters produce a multilayered cyborg ecosystem. The concept of assemblage is helpful to redefine the limited connotations of an ecosystem (Tsing, 2015). Multispecies can be defined as, composed of, containing, or involving two or more species and especially biological species. Although the work stretches this definition of multispecies beyond the biological to include that which is chemical and mechanical (Haraway, 1991: 1).

As the architect I am tasked with using foresight to narrate and mediate ecological responsibilities. Therefore, the work is intrigued by structures of power within mining which are simultaneously historic and contemporary, through revealing the erasure, alteration, and mutation of the ecological surface within the mining site of Edendale. This is done by scale changes, new adjacencies, and collections of ecological truths.