Performing Bitumen, Materialising Desiré

Abstract

Julieanna Preston and Jen Archer-Martin attempt to reveal the agential voices of the assemblages of human and nonhuman agents. Such are the human embodiment in the form of performance as yet another self-organising pile, an assemblage of events operating across scales of temporality, materiality and affectivity and bitumen, a vital and vibrant surface of our living. A language shift away from clichés and stereotypes resets a new ecology of human and nonhuman materiality at work. Impressively vivid, live instances, captured in words, describe the malleability of all agents entangled in the same ecology. Bitumen is introduced through a coagulated dialogue between a poetic and philosophical voice. The labourer is replaced with that of a caretaker, informed by an ethic of care. This call for care is woven as a secondary thread into the context as both a disruptive and a reparative act, much as the roadworker’s high-visibility tribal garbs both screams ‘Take care!’ and reassures ‘I’ll take care of it’.