Dark Honey: A Geo-Architectural Fiction of Extraction and Extinction

Abstract

What does it mean to be human? As a species, we are defined by the contaminations that compose us and that are imposed by us. Spellbound by progress, our techno-hubris leaves no surface on Earth unaffected by perpetual geopolitical pursuit. Visualizing this preoccupation, ‘museumified’ settlements of golden origins in southern British Columbia set the stage for a geo-architectural fiction storying the consequences of extraction. Our compression of space and time is explored through the lens of ‘Dark Honey’: an integrated collective of nomadic misfits travelling along the Crowsnest Highway. Pausing in the Village of Salmo, Dark Honey operates within the uninhabitable to reveal our inescapable relational constellations. Two bricolage landscapes are constructed with material salvaged from the origin of Salmo—neglected sites of extraction hidden in the surrounding mountains. Through the intersection of factual fictions of extraction and extinction, Dark Honey physically manifests the rifts that exist within our constructed realities.