“Entanglement teaches us to look away from whatever is the immediate object of study, to explore the networks of dependencies that constrain and drive the human condition.  It invites us to trace the threads that spread out from each action, entangling that action within wider socio-material realms”  Professor Ian Hodder (2016) Studies in human-thing entanglement

beneath(_) is a new collaboration with Lucy Gresley, involving (for the first time) an entanglement of our own artistic practices.  Using archaeology as our point of origin our working brief is to discover a lost society in clay whose slippery material presence and specialist investigation (the movement from object to subject) draws attention to ideas of truth, knowledge and fantasy inherent in our understanding of place.

The central premise of our enquiry is the degree to which we can expect others to trust forensic interpretations of the world when only those bestowed with specialist knowledge and training are in a position to pass judgement.  How real is an interpreted world perceived in the absence of understanding? to what extent do trusted realities continue to frame our existence? and what happens if we stop trusting?  A module in Archaeological Studies (MLitt) with the University of the Highlands and Islands, Orkney will frame our project, its virtual (distance learning) and material (field trip) contexts appropriately shifting as we ask questions about how and where knowledge is constructed.