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In etymology, tumulus denotes an earth mound over a prehistoric tomb. In Turkish, it is called Tümülüs, Höyük, and Kurgan, terms also common in Central Asia. In the UK, a Tumulus is called a cairn, which comes from a Gaelic term meaning heap of stones (Drummond, 2007, p. 26). Beyond the archaeological value of an ancient grave of an affluent family, this project focuses on field notes that address the entanglement of multispecies and ecosemiotics of the tumulus landscapes while incorporating elements of queer ecology, archaeology, and cyberfeminist web archaeology. For this practice-based research, I developed a Space Tumulus (ST) 'handmade web' (Carpenter, 2015), informed by J.R. Carpenter's poetic web, that incorporates intersectionality, queer ecology, archaeology, and web archaeology areas historically colonised by a Western binary perspective on material semiotics. I devised a research methodology, un/digging, which opposes colonial archaeology, influenced by Undoing the Future (Faculty of Arts, Aarhus Universitet, 2016), authored by Karen Barad. Un/digging counters colonial archaeology, which historically legitimises colonialism and perpetuates sexist and racist narratives (e.g., phrenology). Colonial archaeology’s practices include digging, disturbing, destroying, misinterpreting, and misrepresenting past life forms and societies. In contrast, un/digging methodology is informed by Indigenous Archaeology as a decolonising and queering practice. Additionally, indigenous futurism, a subgenre of cyberfeminism, forms and informs the ST website. For the Un/digging Space Tumulus research project, I employ a series of methods and techniques that contrast with the traditional archaeological method of digging. Instead, un/digging methodology is applied by the methods of embodied multi-sensory field notes at the prehistoric tumuli landscapes in Scotland and Türkiye. These field notes involve observation, seeding, walking, and multimedia recording (video, photography), alongside olfactory and auditory sensory engagement. These field notes are subsequently reinterpreted in physical/cyberspace, utilising poetic narratives crafted with ASCII, GIF, HTML and CSS. All the collected field notes from the tumulus landscapes are located on the ST website, which serves as a platform for the dissemination and discussion of the research findings. The website is focused on embodied queer, indigenous, eco-semiotic poetic narratives. These collected/grown eco-semiotic materials, such as mycelium, natural fibres, seeds, and olfactory and auditory stimuli, represent the temporality of the entangled spacetime garden and grave in the tumulus cybersite. These future-present eco-facts and burial grave goods speak to the conditions of death, decay, time, and space in relation to the temporality of the material-immaterial. The ST website prompts the audience to consider if the sensorial qualities of ecofacts' memory can surpass mediums, igniting awareness of our profound relationship to the landscape. This thesis asks: How might queer ecology trouble colonial archaeology through art practice? How does embodied multi-sensory fieldwork undo colonial archaeology and decode queer ecology in the cyber/IRL (nature) space? How can ST produce knowledge and practice in an effort to reshape the future-present poetically as a world-building practice? By considering and responding to the research questions, this cross-disciplinary research contributes to decolonising studies in the fields of art, archaeology, and cyberfeminism through a queer ecological lens with an emphasis on love, care, and intra-action. (Barad, 2007).

cc özdoğan
𐇣CC on Isle of Mull





Space Tumulus

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