Take this, Leave a Trace

BROCKMAN 4 MINE, PILBRA WA

60,000 YEARS FOR A QUICK BUCK

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TAKE THIS LEAVE A TRACE Adopted by people visiting the outdoors, the leave no trace (LNT) principle aims to keep nature exactly how we found it, stating that nature was here before us and will be here after us. As a set of outdoor ethics, LNT strives to ensure that ecological damage is minimised, cultural artifacts are preserved, and objects are left in place1. As a contrasting statement, leave a trace aims to critique how the current mining industry leaves nature irreparable. The great voids left as a product of quarrying are often left abandoned long after the minerals are gone, taking hundreds of years for nature to return, if it does.

The ambiguity, leave a trace also intends to put the responsibility onto you, the reader, to take this booklet and use it to critique our current state, whether you protest for Indigenous land rights, climate inaction or your own issue. In spite of all of the challenges we face in Australia and globally, including major shifts in human politics and conflict, us as observers and collaborators have the ability to make noise and pave a better future that is not just an imagining but a push for real change.

1. Leave no trace. 2021. ‘Principle 4: Leave What You Find’. LNT.org. https://lnt.org/why/7-principles/leave-what-you-find/ 2. Horden House. 2023. ‘An Alluvial Diggings near Ararat, Victoria, 1858’. Horden House Rare books. https://www.hordern.com/pages/books/4505026/edward-roper/an-alluvial-diggings-near-ararat-victoria-1858/

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60,000 YEARS FOR A QUICK BUCK Based from Edward Roper’s piece, Gold Diggings, Ararat (c.1858), 60,000 years for a quick buck places a commentary on the evolution of mining in Australia. Roper, a British artist, presents this scene by contrasting the settlers excitement for the gold rush with the Aboriginal group draped in government-issue blankets2 observing over Country.

The exposition reveals the impact of this period, by imposing the sacred Juukan gorges which were destroyed in May 2020 by Rio Tinto. The miners present are shown to continue digging into the gorge, while panners to the left, sift through the debris searching only for minerals, and dumping all that is colonially unvaluable.

The background continues this scene, with dust clouds forming over the mountains, critiquing the magnitude of explosives that Orica currently use, almost as haphazardly as the settler miners.

In the mid-ground, the architectural outcome of colonisation is reflected through the temporary tents and the permanent Orica House. Both typologies of structures are observable globally in countries as proof of colonisation, where the international style of the monolithic building imposes over the land, forcing its rigid form over the rolling plains.

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TERRA COMMUNIS In response to the relationship of ‘protest’ and ‘architecture’ being proposed in Fugitivity, this narrative introduces a concept resolution to critique the existing mining practices that destroy sacred Indigenous sites. The benefits from the mining of iron ore, coal and other minerals outweigh the demands for environmental and social consciousness around areas of land that have anthropological, historical, and ongoing importance for Indigenous peoples. While substantial effort on a global scale has been committed to understand and promote Aboriginal people’s way of knowing, seeing and caring for Country, complexities emerge when such knowledge is forced to exist within ongoing colonial systems.

The colonial view of land relies on it working for our benefit. Settlers globally use territorialisation to assert power over people and resources, keeping valuable land to themselves, and relegating the remaining to the edge. Through this perspective, mining transforms space from valuable to unvaluable, reaping the minerals from the land until there is no land left.

Is it possible to change this perspective within a colonial system and treat Country as an extension of us, an entity that cares for us as we care for it?

People talk about Country in the same way that they would talk about a person: they speak to Country, sing to Country, visit Country, worry about Country, feel sorry for Country, and long for Country. People say that Country knows, hears, smells, takes notice, takes care, is sorry or happy. Country is not a generalised or undifferentiated type of place, such as one might indicate with terms like ‘spending a day in the Country’ or ‘going up the Country’. Rather, Country is a living entity with a yesterday, today and tomorrow, with a consciousness, and a will toward life.3 Colonisation’s purpose is to destroy this relationship.

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The ongoing destruction of Country is sought to disintegrate Indigenous people’s connection to land and architecture is one of its tools. The desecration of Country from mining and architecture continues to violently exclude, dispossess and displace Aboriginal peoples, pushed to the edges of society where they are further marginalised - out of the colonial view. Destruction of land for housing projects reinforce a settler narrative, wiping a previously thriving land for our own use, then keeping what was once here, far, far away from us.

Terra Communis aims to reflect these values, the narrative focuses on reprogramming an inner-city building from an office block to a informal settlement based on the mutual relationship between the existing land and the new inhabitants. The tale follows a restructuring of the ICI / Orica House, the first skyscraper in Melbourne and an icon of the International style - a style reflecting plain, unadorned rectilinear forms built of steel, reinforced concrete, and glass4 - which houses the explosive supplier Orica.

This building, heritage listed in 2005 at age 57, had more value than the Juukan Gorge before its destruction, aged approximately at 46,000 years. The narrative critiques this value duality, from a colonial perspective, how would it feel desecrating a heritage site and transforming it into an informal settlement?

Terra Communis aims to highlight the power of the protest, in a fictional world where companies listen to the public. Such demonstration hopes to bring conversation to the government and public’s ignorance which reinforces over 235 years of marginalisation, destruction, and genocide in Australia.

3. D. B. Rose. 1996. ‘Nourishing Terrains: Australian Aboriginal views of landscape and wilderness’.

Australian Heritage Commission. Canberra. p7 4. MOMA (The Museum of Modern Art). 2023. ‘Terms: International Style’. moma.org. https:// www.moma.org/collection/terms/international-style

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TERRA COMMUNIS. A TALE OF HOW 235 YEARS OF COLONISATION WAS OVERCOME BY THE PEOPLE AND THEIR ARCHITECTURE.

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ON ONE FATEFUL DAY IN 2020, RIO TINTO DESTROYED 46,000 YEARS OF ABORIGINAL HISTORY... AT ORICA, WORKERS QUESTION THEIR COMPLICITY IN THE DISASTER.

THE HEADS OF THE LARGEST MINING COMPANIES GATHER TO FIGURE OUT HOW THEY COULD HAVE BEEN SO IGNORANT... MEANWHILE, PROTESTERS DEMAND JUSTICE...

MINING THEM? ILL MINE YOU

ALWAYS WAS ALWAYS WILL BE!

YOUR RENT IS DUE

EXPLODE YOUR OWN CATHEDRAL

WE NEED TO EXPLODE ORICA!

UO YT

HIS 00 H 46,0 E! W N GO UT YO O AB

NO UO G BA

EXPLODE YOUR OWN CHURCH

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YOUR RENT IS DUE

EXPLODE YOUR OWN CHURCH

HOWEVER, THE FREE PLAN OF THE ICI IS TOO OPEN FOR THE OCCUPANTS... SO...

FROM ALL THE GOVERNMENT AND SOCIAL PRESSURE, THE ORICA CEO DECIDES TO RESIGN... BUT WITHOUT THEIR LEADER, THE WORKERS DON’T KNOW WHAT TO DO...

INHABITANTS BEGIN TO MAKE THEIR OWN ROOMS USING COMMON MATERIALS.

WITH NO LEADER, PEOPLE START BREAKING WINDOWS TO LET MORE AIR IN...

BIT BY BIT, PEOPLE START BRINGING LIFE AND THEIR HOMES INTO THE BUILDING...

INHABITANTS START BUILDING BALCONIES, HAPPY TO ENJOY THEIR NEW HOME...

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TERRA COMMUNIS... IN THE HEART OF MELBOURNE, THE INFORMAL HOUSING COMPLEX BECOMES A BUILDING WHICH REPRESENTED THE PEOPLE, AND THE POWER OF PROTEST.

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PEOPLE RESTED IN THE HEADQUARTERS WHICH SOUGHT OUT TO DESTROY. BEDROOMS REPLACED OFFICE DESKS, CORNER SHOPS REPLACED MEETING ROOMS...

AS MORE AND MORE INHABITANTS LIVED IN THE BUILDING, MORE FLOORS GET REDISCOVERED, LEAVING SPACE FOR THEIR OWN HOMES, SHOPS AND ACTIVITIES.

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TERRA COMMUNIS BECAME A PLACE FOR EVERYBODY, VISITORS BECAME DWELLERS, AS NEIGHBOURS WATCHED THE BUILDING GROW WITH EVERY NEW HOME.

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THE PREVIOUSLY CONCRETED AND PAVED GROUND IS OPENED AND LIBERATED, PLANTS BEGIN BASKING IN THEIR NEW FREEDOM, CHILDREN RUN COLUMN TO COLUMN, FROM OUTSIDE TO

THE ONCE CORPORATE OFFICES HAVE BEEN BROKEN DOWN, GIVING SPACE FOR ANY AND ALL ACTIVITIES, PARENTS REST WHILE CHILDREN PLAY, ALL PEOPLES COME TOGETHER.

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GROWING OUT OF BROKEN RIGIDNESS. PEOPLE BEGIN TO WALK BETWEEN THEMSELVES, IN, LEAVING DIRT ON THE FLOOR.

ABANDONED ROOMS ARE OPENED, LEAVING THE BONES FOR NEW INHABITANTS TO BUILD THEIR HOME, A TRACE OF PREVIOUS OWNERS, ACKNOWLEDGING WHO CAME BEFORE.

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BROCKMAN 4 MINE, PILBRA WA