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not only the earth we share
Who Makes The City
The Production of Daily Life
Project Information

 

“The human qualities of the city emerge from our practices in the diverse spaces of the city, even as those spaces are subject to enclosure both by private and public state ownership, as well as by social control, appropriation, and countermoves to assert what Henri Lefebvre called “the right to the city” on the part of the inhabitants.”

David Harvey  (2012)

not only the earth we share is a film and exhibition project by artist Sol Archer, produced over a multi-year residency with the art organisation Household C.I.C. in Belfast, Northern Ireland.

It is the result of engagement with people and communities of Sailortown, a historical Belfast neighbourhood, which was nearly entirely demolished during the 1960s for the development of an as-yet-incomplete motorway interchange. The work focuses on the production of community and cultural commons through the performance of imagination and memory. 

In collaboration with Household, Sol Archer spent time with individuals and groups identifying with contemporary and historical Sailortown and it’s surrounding area: elderly former residents, new migrant communities, local grassroots organisations, and children and young people living in a small post-2008 crash social housing complex.

This process involved the documentation of oral histories, with a particular focus on historical conditions of labour in the Docks, seafaring, and the now long-gone mills and factories to which Sailortown provided generations of workers.