Dust against the Anthropocene: Yhonnie Scarce’s nuclear geo-fictions

Abstract

Against the universalizing of the Anthropocene, radioactive dust affects specific communities more than others. At the same time, it carries particles from local sites to cosmic horizons. Uranium dust encodes deep timescales of planetary formation and extinction as they intersect with histories of violence and extraction, myth and current politics. This article analyses artwork by Yhonnie Scarce, descendant of the Kokatha and Nukunu peoples of South Australia, arguing for a particulate geo-fiction as method of engagement with colonial politics of deep time. By sampling and literally unearthing nuclear histories, Scarce’s work traces more-than-human toxic ecologies. Through a condensation of uranium-scale temporalities, the present moment of its exhibition is prised open. This becomes a speculative ethical encounter with responsibilities to deep histories and futures beyond itself, the lingering after effects of British colonial violence inscribed into the materiality of the work.