How can we experience the history of a site from a microbial perspective? What does a non-human archive look like? Dust settles—layer upon layer, a quiet, unremarkable presence. But dust is not simply the residue of decay; it is alive, teem with microbial life, a material archive of entangled histories. The Materialised Temporality of Dust invites us to look closer, to see dust not as matter out of place, but as a repository of life—a complex mixture of organic and inorganic matter where the past and future converge in microbial form. Here, microbes do more than persist; they shape the world, recording the intricate interactions of life that have unfolded across time. Through the lens of microbial life, participants are invited to re-experience the Royal College of Art’s Kensington Campus as it stood in the 1960s to present times. But this is not a human-centered history. It is a history told by dust, through the microbial lives that have flourished unnoticed, inhabiting spaces we call "ours." The Materialised Temporality of Dust
Dr Carolina Ramirez-Figueroa (MX), Antony Nevin (NZ), Campbell Orme (UK), Laura Selby (UK) and Neil Aldridge (NZ)
