Abstract

In the context of the material ‘turn’ and the new material feminisms of philosophers such as Elizabeth Grosz and Karen Barad, this chapter examines the different artistic approaches of the author and the artist John Latham to the oil-shale waste bings of West Lothian, Scotland.In the 1970s the latter adopted a distanced perspective prioritising form over the material properties and forces of the waste itself. As a visual artist my approach to Niddry bing examines the state of flux of the site as a whole, but also of the oil-shale waste in particular: its oxidisation, its potential for crushing, flaking, compressing and mixing. In examining these two distinct artistic approaches the chapter describes a broader philosophical shift in the humanities and social sciences from the epistemological to the ontological.