Urban Geologics / Topographic Spectres

The conditions of everyday modernity are saturated by an oft-unrecognised relation to mineral life and memory. The vital energies of various urbanisms are in a double bind where it is at once parasitically devouring subterranean material to fuel its growth whilst obscuring these feeding patterns. Geologic strata crushed and sifted to form concrete, aggregate, and sand. The forces of contemporary development and capitalism seek to extract material from a constructed notion of sub terra nullius. This paper argues for a return to the aesthetics of geologic material in the effort to avoid pure commodification of strata in the construction of everyday urban fields and encounters. It does so through graphic and textual accounts of two urban landscapes of extraction; Horokiwi in New Zealand, and Twin Creeks in Virginia, USA; highlighting the role of material in their surrounding built environments and potential as portals to the affective force of the underworld. We no longer understand where the material invested in concrete, benchtops, beams and columns was taken from. Revisiting the aesthetic force of strata and geologic material provides us an opportunity to re-situate our sociocultural relationships to longue durée inherent to the places in which we live, work, relax, and stand.