FieldARTS Infrastructures of Empire

Situated on the banks of the Clyde, between the subtidal sedimentary flows of the Firth and the former Plantation Quay, FieldARTS is a research residency for infrastructural fieldwork in the arts and humanities. Occupying a hydrological vantage point on the Second City of Empire, the residency offers a platform for collaborative field research grounded in sites like Govan Graving Docks, BAE Systems shipyard, Hunterston power station, and the Eerie Port listening posts on Isle of Cumbrae as infrastructures through which the legacies of successive resource frontiers and contemporary mechanisms of military-industrial accumulation appear in intimate relation. Once dredged and engineered as a logistical conduit for tobacco, capital, and sugar from the city’s contrapuntal geographies, the Clyde is increasingly envisioned as an engine of infrastructural regeneration bound up in narratives of energy transition, militarised re-industrialisation, and urban renewal. At this material juncture of colonial sediments and transitional horizons FieldARTS asks how environmental artists, researchers, and practitioners might develop methods for field study commensurate with enduring processes of infrastructural dispossession and uneven redevelopment.

Hosted by the University of Glasgow, FieldARTS is organised by Fred Carter in collaboration with the Infrastructure Humanities Group and 16 Collective, supported by IHG, Dear Green Bothy, and ARC Engage.