Soil: Where We Grow From, and Where We Dig Down

Beneath our feet, there is soil.

We come from soil, step upon it, forget it, and eventually are covered by it. The earth receives everything that falls: seeds, humus, bones, roots, rainwater, waste, traces, time. Beneath the seemingly static surface is a living stratum still at work. Whenever we try to understand where something comes from, we must also dig downward, and in doing so, disturb it more forcefully.

The second issue of STRATUM takes soil as its point of departure.

We want to approach soil as a symbol of cultural structure: it stores residue and produces nourishment; it buries experience and allows experience to grow again in another form; it receives what has been left behind, and by doing so, lets these things participate in the present. Countless experiences and thoughts mix into soil, fermenting there, making it damp and crowded. Until one day, the roots of growth—sound, pain, movement, image, or a belated sentence—rise again and converge. For this issue, soil is both the ground of our growth and the stratum to which we continually return, dig into, and question.

The articles and conversations gathered in this issue of STRATUM move across different mediums, geographies, and methods. Some enter internet culture and digital vernacular memory; some begin from the body, disability, and performance; some examine dirt, legibility, classification, and governance; others reorganize attention through sound, listening, and realities that have been drowned out. Together, they form the geological section of this issue. They may seem dispersed, yet they all respond to the same question: how do experiences that have not yet grown above our heads, that have not yet been recognized as fruits worthy of being looked up to, continue to act upon the present? And before they become lush with branches and leaves, what is supporting, pressing upon, and rewriting them from below?

In Digital Folklore and the Vernacular Archive, internet fragments are discussed as a form of vernacular archive unique to the digital age. Memes, screenshots, rumors, platform images, and repeatedly circulated low-resolution images may be dismissed as excessively online, vulgar, or absurd, and therefore denied entry into “official history.” Yet they have indeed preserved a generation of modern people who wanted to look and to be looked at, through cycles of replication and misreading. The Twenty-Ninth Tooth writes bodily memory as another kind of private archive. Experiences that are difficult to speak aloud or record formally still remain in memory, like a tooth that does not exist in any anatomical chart. The Place of Dirt, meanwhile, brings us to the lowest end of a classificatory system. Our reaction to dirt is, in fact, a sense of displaced order produced when we confront disorder. From hair to blood, from corpses to mixed identities, these things unsettle us because they disturb the boundaries through which humans understand the social world. Soil is a gathering place for “matter out of place”—it reminds us that culture’s desire for order may often be more violent than we are willing to admit.

And when memory is no longer understood only as archive, it begins to enter the body. Used as a tool of expression, treated as an object waiting to be watched and evaluated, the body is the closest stratum to us, and also the one we can least escape. Bone and blood endure time, preserve experience, and continuously rewrite themselves through movement and pain.

In Fish-Slapping: Dancing Feminist Disability, Pam Patterson writes the entanglement between feminism and disability as an absurd dance. Theory and performance practice slap and interrupt one another like the comic performers in the Monty Python sketch, repeatedly forcing the artist to readjust the center of her self-understanding. In the conversation with Noa Covelo, the artist repeatedly emphasizes that movement belongs to everyone—movement is a way for every person to understand themselves, sense others, and enter space. The conversation with Li Ning, by contrast, returns almost directly to soil itself. The land of childhood, a tooth buried beside the roots of a tree, a body lost and found again through school discipline, and the process of returning to oneself through dance after the death of his father together trace a path through which the body finds its way home. Land is dantian: the source point where memory and life force gather. And the body that grows out of land can also, through artistic practice, bodily labor, and reconciliation with the self, return again and again to where it came from.

Yet not everything that has sedimented can naturally rise to the surface. The final thread of this issue therefore turns toward the mechanisms through which visibility and audibility are produced.

Whether something becomes visible or audible is always co-produced by the rules of society as a whole. In The Politics of Legibility, the question is: what must first become “legible” in order to enter public space? In China’s cultural field, how a work is explained, translated, and classified often determines whether it can safely gain entry into an institutional language system. Creation is negotiation, and being seen is strategy. Sonic Fragments and Overheard Realities turns the question toward sound. Đurđija Vučinić’s practice reminds us that listening is, in fact, a subjective ethical relation. The sounds we receive reflect hierarchies of attention. And the sounds that ultimately fail to arrive, drowned out by noise, constitute another buried politics—the unstable ground upon which we live.

Looking back from here, these works together form the geological section of this issue. They make “soil” no longer merely a metaphor for nature or growth, but a way of reading experience: to look into the deep pits of internet memory, into the unnamed inventory inside the body, into stains, into bodies in pain, and into the darkness where sound and image have not yet arrived. Slow down. Look downward. Look inward. After all, the soil beneath our feet is not only about “where we want to run toward.” It is also about “where we are willing to dig.” The growth of a plant is never only a clean ascent toward light; it also requires roots to move downward. Even if no perfect answer can be found, the action itself reminds us that the ground beneath our feet is so mottled. And what truly shapes the present may not always float on the surface.

We begin from soil, and from soil we begin again.

Welcome to the second layer of STRATUM.


土壤：我们从中生长，也向下挖掘

在脚下，是土壤。

我们从土壤中来，踩踏着它，遗忘着它，最终也会被它覆盖。大地将下落的一切承接——种子、腐殖质、骨骼、根系、雨水、废弃物、痕迹、时间。在看似静态的地表之下，是鲜活地作动着的地层，而当我们试图理解某件事从何而来时，也必然会向下挖掘，并更剧烈地扰动它。

STRATUM第二期，以土壤为题。

我们想要将土壤视作一种文化架构的象征：它存储残余，也制造养分；它埋藏经验，也让经验以新的形式重新生长；它接纳了被遗落的事物，也由此，让这些事物参与进了我们的当下。无数的经验与想法混杂进土壤，在其中发酵，使它变得潮湿和拥挤。直到有那样的某一天，生长的根系——声音、疼痛、动作、图像或一句迟来的话——重新上升，会合。对本期而言，土壤既是我们成长的基础，也是我们不断返回、挖掘、追问的地层。

本期STRATUM收录的文章与访谈跨越了不同的媒介、地域，与方法。有的进入互联网文化与数字民间记忆，有的从身体、残障，与表演出发，有的讨论污秽、可读性、分类与治理，也有的通过声音、倾听和被淹没的现实重新组织注意力。它们共同构成本期的地层剖面，看似分散，却都在回应同一个问题：那些尚未长到我们头顶、尚未被承认为值得仰视的果实的经验，如何仍然在当下发生作用？而在它们枝繁叶茂之前，又是什么在下方支撑着它、压迫着它、改写着它？

在Digital Folklore and the Vernacular Archive中，讨论了成为独属于数字时代的民间档案的互联网碎片。迷因、截图、谣言、平台影像与被反复转发的低清图像，或许会被视为过度网络化与庸俗荒诞，而无法进入“正史”。但它们也的确曾切实地通过一遍遍复制与误读的循环，保存了一代想要观看着与想要被看着的现代人。The Twenty-Ninth Tooth则将身体记忆写成另一种私人档案。难以诉诸于口或记载于案的经验，其实仍然停留在记忆之中，像一颗并不存在于解剖图谱中的牙。而 The Place of Dirt 将我们带向分类系统的最下端。我们对污秽的反应，其实是面对混乱时产生的秩序错位感。从头发到血液，从尸体到混合的身份，它们之所以令人不安，是因为扰动了人类对社会认知的边界。土壤是“错位之物”的聚集处——它提醒我们，文化对于秩序的渴望，或许常常比我们愿意承认的更暴力。

而当记忆不再只被理解为档案时，它就开始进入身体。被用作表达的工具，被视作等待观看与评估的对象，身体是我们最切近、也最难逃离的地层。骨与血承受时间，保存经验，也在持续不断的移动与阵痛之中，不断重写自身。

Pam Patterson 在 Fish-Slapping: Dancing Feminist Disability 中，将女性主义与身体障碍间的纠葛写成了一场荒诞的舞蹈。理论与表演实践像 Monty Python 小品中的滑稽演员般彼此拍打、互相打断，也不断迫使艺术家重新调整自我理解的重心。在与 Noa Covelo 的对话中，这位艺术家则反复强调，movement belongs to everyone——移动，是每个人理解自己、感知他人、进入空间的方法。而与 Li Ning 的对话则几乎直接回到了土壤本身。童年的土地、被埋在树根旁的一颗牙、从学校规训中失去又重新找回的身体、父亲离世后通过舞蹈回到自身的过程，共同画出了让身体回家的道路。土地是丹田，是记忆和生命力汇聚的源点。而自土地中长出的身体，也可以通过艺术实践、身体劳动与自我和解，一次次返回自己的来处。

然而，不是所有沉积的事物，都能够自然浮出表面。 于是，本期的最后一条线索转向可见性与可听性的生产机制。 

可见也好，可听也罢，从来都是由整个社会的规则共同生产的。如The Politics of Legibility中，讨论的是：什么必须先变得“可读”，才能进入公共空间？在中国的文化场域中，一个作品如何被解释、翻译、与归类，往往决定了它是否能获得安全进入制度语言系统的资格。创作是协商，而看见是策略。而Sonic Fragments and Overheard Realities 则将问题转向声音。Đurđija Vučinić 的实践提醒我们，倾听，其实是主观的伦理关系。我们所接收的声音，实则反映了注意力的等级。而最终也没能抵达，为噪音所淹没的声音，构成了另一种被埋藏的政治——构成了我们踏着它去生活的、不安定的大地。

由此回看，这些作品共同构成了本期的地层剖面。它们让“土壤”不再只是关于自然或生长的隐喻，而成为一种阅读经验的方式：去看互联网记忆的深窟、去看身体内部未命名的库存、去看污迹、去看疼痛的身体，以及声音与图像尚未抵达的黑暗。放慢速度，向下看，向内看。毕竟，脚下的土壤并不只是关于“我们想要朝着哪里飞跑”，也同样关于“我们愿意向哪里挖掘”。一株植物的生长，从来不只是干干净净地朝着光亮向上，也同样需要向下扎根。即使找不到完美的答案，这一动作本身也依然提醒着我们：我们脚下的地面是如此斑驳。而真正塑造当下的事物，或许不总是浮于表面。

我们从土壤开始，也从土壤重新开始。

欢迎进入 STRATUM 的第二层。