Abandoned to their own fate, and left to their own devices - the orphaned territories are at the precipice of a renewed biological paradigm, as they spearhead to a new ecological equilibrium propelled from generations of extractivist industrial activities. Yet, they are often sheltered from the broader scientific understanding due to being inaccessible in planning terms, the bountiful natural capital in place as mere shells to be eventually discarded, thought as defiled and banal to one’s experiential sensibilities. Simultaneously, contemporary discourses on brownfields often pivot to the regenerative potential of such, where the quality of “derelictness” is in fact indesirable and the ruinous motif as simply decor for a gentrifying future.
The project is situated on the Wallace Craigie Mill of Dundee, a former jute preparing and spinning factory. Taking on the form of a socioecological laboratory, it is a process-oriented intervention intended to speculate on furtive and spontaneous inhabitations that may exist in unpredictable and potentially fleeting timeframes. Participatory strategies guide the development and accessibility of these “meanwhile” sites through minimal, bodily engagements with the anthropogenic soil and plants that allow room for a broader, unplanned series of successional behavior, while cultivating care, ownership, or even a sense of guerilla-ship against a future, speculative series of contestations towards the industrial heritage.
