The Cadastral Map as Imperial Ruin: All She Surveys

Stairways and Ruins

Abstract

While living and studying in New Zealand, I encountered a derelict Victorian fountain at Wairongoa Springs on the Taieri Plain near Dunedin. Initially struck by the romance of the scene, I soon found this colonial relic quite unsettling. I explored the intersecting object histories of this fountain through the metaphors of ruin, ruination and the gaze in a Master of Fine Arts degree obtained from the Dunedin School of Art (Otago Polytechnic) in 2023. Now, back in South Africa, I reflect on All She Surveys, an installation work from Mother’s Ruin, the exhibition component of my MFA. I reflect on my own work and process and the similarities between South Africa and New Zealand using the cross-cutting themes of colonisation, expropriation and exploitation of natural resources through cadastral grids of property delineation. I invite readers to think alongside Ann Laura Stoler as she introduces the concept of enduring imperial debris and considers the notion of ruin, both as noun and verb, as a legacy of colonisation and empire. I interpret these legacies as imperial debris and explore their role within Slavoj Žižek’s framework of objective violence. My work aims to offer a new, oblique vantage point on this matrix of violence – these ruins that continue to ruin us.