Limelight: Postcards From The Anthropocene, Unsettling
The Geopolitics
 of Representation

Limelight (2016-20) aims to establish terms through which limestone as a geological material with industrial application, presents and holds agency. It aims to determine how exposures of limestone’s material agency are intrinsic to understanding the representations and experiences of its landscapes. Limelight (Postcards From The Anthropocene, Unsettling
The Geopolitics
 of Representation) at Edinburgh University was a performance that took the form of a conference paper. It was constructed and delivered through material lime and examined lime’s temporalities, speeds, material states and multiplicities through apparatus, demonstration, projection, sound and read text. The limelight illumination broadcast during Limelight (Cardiff Contemporary & Llangattock Lime Kiln) [linked output] was played back through Limestone Player Apparatus [linked output], a machine apparatus of quicklime, computer, wires and projector. The deployment of this apparatus created a material-led timeframe and duration for the performance. The speed of the video playback and therefore the duration of the paper was contingent to the behaviour of quicklime, a material state of limestone. The exothermic reaction of quicklime with the water created temperature changes that controlled the video playback from moment-to-moment. Read text, sound and projected images established immersive multi-sensory storytelling through the conjuring of layered industrial limestone landscapes with social histories and transforming materialities of lime.