“To dwell in mud is to sink into matters of distant histories and infinite futures. The fragile skin of the earth, it is both reliant on and imperative to life. It is matter in constant flux.”
“Muddled Futures: Clay Energy and Other Clay Stories” is rooted in the muddy landscape of Aberdeen. Drawn out from the city’s historical pottery industry, it investigates the potentials posed by clay-infrastructures in a post-petroleum world. Framed around the term ‘clay energy,’ it explores the energetic fluxes in and facilitated by clay in order to imagine a clay infrastructure that can help shift the tallies of power between the dominating petroleum industry and the vulnerable communities exploited by it.
Exploring the material infrastructures of the post-petroleum world both theoretically and materially, the subject-matter is studied through a range of representational styles and mediums.
The work embraces muddled perspectives, testing, probing and shifting approaches, in an attempt to illicit new connections and ways of seeing.
Mari K. Helland has a master’s in architecture from Edinburgh School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture. Her research focuses on material infrastructures, which she has investigated in the context of urban milieus and the global environmental crisis. Working interdisciplinary, her work has included a range of representational styles, including C++ coding, 3D modelling, drawing, writing, painting and pottery. Her academic projects have been nominated and awarded prizes both in the UK and abroad and has been published in the UoU journal.
