Whilst searching for some clarification about entropy for the script for my current project, I ended up down a path looking at dirt and came across this article looking at the work of Mary Douglas.

“the old definition of dirt as matter out of place.”

Ben Campkin (2013) Placing “Matter Out of Place”: Purity and Danger as Evidence for Architecture and Urbanism, Architectural Theory Review, 18:1, 46-61, DOI: 10.1080/13264826.2013.785579

This idea caught my thinking as I was considering someone teetering at the end of existence looking back, if we take mater literally, the stuff of the universe, when is it out of place? Campkin’s article considers how Douglas explored this.

Yet, there is no such thing as absolute dirt—it is a matter of perception and classification.

Campkin (2013)

There is an argument within cosmology that as the universe expands and cools the entropy will increase until everything is uniform, I was intrigued by the though experiment of someone at this point looking back, there are no stars, no lights, endless sameness, flatness. Would this sameness appear organised or disorganised? This state would provide no energy for sustaining life. This bought to mind the obvious Dylan Thomas reference.

Do not go gentle into that good night… Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Do not go gentle into that good night – Dylan Thomas

This seemed like a motivation of this film that I am developing, the character standing at that end point looking back wanting to send a message that might outlast them as the lights go out, to leave something behind, to not be forgotten, to be heard.

In this, the researcher (Douglas) embedded herself within an environment characterised by its “otherness”, often for years at a time, in order to understand people in relation to the region in which they lived, their kinship relations, their politics, language, economy, technologies, and so on.

Campkin (2013)

This argument summarises for me why consideration of dirt is important, what is considered clean/dirty, good/bad, beautiful/ugly is not inherent, within different cultures and communities this is set by the power systems.

This has implications for whose voice is heard and how that voice is classified.