shifting_sands_fieldwork (2017-2019)
ESRC-funded
 
SAND is a largely invisible component at the core our shared contemporary.
 
Indeed, today sand is unearthed at unprecedented rates:
It is extracted from riverbeds, stolen from beaches
and unearthed beneath agricultural lands across the planet.

Mixed with gravels, cement and water, sand becomes the concrete foundation of the infrastructure we rely on to do almost anything.

Indeed, beyond concrete, sand is also used to construct computer chips, fashion glass and build extensions to earth's land mass itself. 

The social and ecological costs of this extraction are huge and are slowly coming to global visibility.
 
In 2019, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) released their first ever extensive report on the ubiquitous material.

Yet conversations remain dominated by narratives of grand extraction processes and largely limited to the histories of the West and present day developments in India and China.
 
In response to this regional and scalar bias, the 'shifting sands' fieldwork sought to capture the labours, lives and livelihoods surrounding the extraction of sand in Ghana's capital city of Accra - a growing city in an expanding metropolitan region of West Africa.

Over the course of a year, I moved with a sand extraction company across the farmland of Accra's margins: the spaces from which sand is first unearthed.

From the edges of the metropolois, the grains are transported to nearby block factories, where they are transformed into the concrete foundations of the city yet to come.

As I moved with the company, I captured elements of labour and life in the extraction 'pits', thus supplementing the grand narratives of global extraction with images and narratives of a more intimate engagement with this earthly material.