Hearth of the Earth

Centered on alchemic and metallurgic practices, Hearth of the Earth highlights the mutual exchanges occurring between body, minerals and land. As part of their talk at Parse Journal, University of Gothenburg, Ayesha reads Hearth of the Earth to a backround of wandering through their sonic and visual archive, documenting moments of being hypnotised and changed by metal. 

This ongoing project researches the reciprocal, sensory and mythic relationships between metal, the body and the planetary systems that sustain them. As a jeweller working within the long shadow of extractive histories, I ask: how might these more intimate ecologies of minerals and the body be traced? In what ways is our connection to land and minerals burnt, served and institutionalised? (Ama.J.Burgess)
As an antidote, what desired lines, codes and rituals can be enacted and found again when one encounters metallics, amidst currents of change and collapse?

From my time spent learning about metallurgy practices in India, field recordings of metal workshops merge with songs of resistance from Odishia unlawful mining to words on animist mining traditions in the regions illuminating the presence and eventual alchemy of metal in both ceremony and labour.