Granular Configurations

Granular Configurations builds on and extends Michaela Büsse's dissertation project »Reclamations: On the Making and Remaking of Sand as a Medium for Design« (2023, University of the Art and Design Linz).

The artistic-scientific research project investigates the ambiguous role of sand as material, medium and object of study. Sand is the second most used resource in the world after water. It accounts for 79% of all aggregates mined and traded each year, literally providing the building blocks for human infrastructure all over the world. However, sand's tendency to continuously decompose contrasts with its application as the most widely used building material in the world. Its granular physics, sometimes fluid, sometimes solid, creates a metastable state that defies human control. From the movements of sand and logistical plans that intermingle on our coasts to the sudden disappearance of sands through extractive colonialism, an eye to processes of material transformation allows us to denaturalize the economies of sand.

Granular Configurations encompasses the commissioned film work Assembling the Coast, the interdisciplinary workshop Poetics and Politics of Sand and the book project Granular Configurations: Sand, Materiality and Planetary Urbanisation (forthcoming with K. Verlag).

Researcher: Michaela Büsse