Dust

Plastic Memory and Aesthetics of Immortality

The research aims to analyse the cultural genealogy within dust, which has acquired a negative atmosphere. Dust is a concept and a structure. Dust is proposed here as a new symbolic form. It is the Plastic Memory of the world and the Aesthetics of Immortality. Dust is a long-lived living material from which a new start can be made with a post-human, post-colonial, post-fiction, post-death and post-linguistic re-framing for a new society and a new way of living the world, because Dust is an ecological environment without environment. Dust “makes-environment” and it is environment. The dust is a heterogeneous archaeological landscape, the Plastic Memory of the World and the Aesthetics of Immortality(1).
Dust is a collective name which refers to a collective material. Dust is a co-produce matter composed by both “the natural world and the natural one”.
Within this materiality it is possible to perceive narrations, History and stories due to her characteristics to preserve and displace, to present and manifest through its fragments and traces layering, preservation and natural archiving of memory.

The research pushes to reaffirm the state of Dust metaphor of a new vision that has to be adopted and embodied in order to create a sustainable future, which also means a new relational system to live in the World. Can dust open new perspectives? From what has been researched, yes, she can because it is a material from which we can learn the wisdom of Nature is inscribed on it and on it emerges. She shows to the world the transformative state of matters and Nature. Nothing dies but get along.
(1)Alice Mestriner, Ahad Moslemi, “Memoria Plastica ed Estetica dell’Immortalità”, MA Thesis, 2022

Making process

They work with this collective and heterogeneous material using different approaches. The process depends on the project, but they commonly create carpets, fabrics, sculptures, and watercolours from it.

Their method varies depending on the medium. For sculptures, they begin by selecting the appropriate dust from their archive, as each type requires a specific technique. Not all dust is the same—its components differ based on people’s lifestyles, locations, and activities. For sculptures, they choose the fluffiest dust, then compact and weave it until it becomes thick and solid.

When using dust as a pigment for canvas and watercolour, they first crush it, then pour the powder into water and let it sit until the water absorbs the colour.

Text submitted by the maker and edited by the Future Materials Bank. For information about reproducing (a part of) this text, please contact the maker.