Dust: perfect circularity

Abstract

This essay centres on a recent exhibition in Whitechapel Gallery, London – A Handful of Dust, curated by David Campany. The exhibition focuses on the thing/concept/idea of dust and features the work and thoughts of artists (e.g. Duchamp), photographers (e.g. Man Ray) and others. In this essay, we walk through the exhibition, pausing at some of its displays while contextualising a number of its many themes in the emerging literature on dust. Dust, we argue, teaches geographers about the fragmentary, the indeterminate, and blurs the line between order and disorder. As we attune to dust and appreciate its movements, we learn to cultivate a culture of geography with fewer certainties about the stability of earth, air and light. Through it, with it, we question, and embrace, the never-ending playfulness and displacement of our bodies and the positions from which we see, write and dust the earth.

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