Lost Rocks: Marble

Publisher:
A Published Event
Publication Type:
Creative Work (written)
Citation:
Lost Rocks: Marble, 2019
Issue Date:
2019-09-01
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MARBLE-JO-LOU-2-v1.pdfSupporting information443.4 kB
Full metadata record
To lose marble is to lose an assembled collective. Marble holds the fragments of a number of lives, compressed together in a single location. To honor this geologic tradition, we reassemble a collective. We spatially locate our Lost Rock, drawing on a series of fragments, stories and lives – each incomplete. We find ourselves on wukaluwikiwayna/ Maria Island, a National Park that stages remnants of its multiple built histories. Some of the fragments are visible: ruins of dismantled housing and abandoned industry; middens several meters deep, reinforcing the dunes of the isthmus; disused post-industrial cement silos that stand sentinel over the ferry wharf; and convict dormitories refurbished as tourist accommodations. Some remnants are no longer visible, except within archives: the desecrated tyreddeme cremation site along a freshwater stream; records of the Napoleonic Wars; an upturned paraganna/abalone shell singed black; Eurocentric notes of the colonial patriarchy. We trace these layers and their performative agency through a ficto-critical practice that makes visible (Prosser, 2006) lesser-known spatial histories of Maria Island as they were lived by marginal occupants. We reflect on marble to imply the creative potential within this collective in two ways. Firstly, through ficto-critical writing practice, we acknowledge the neglected social fragments of the island that are not readily found in the published accounts of the place. Secondly, through a conversation between two feminist authors, each writing in the first person, contributing their own fragments, stories and reflections…
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