Andrew Rabyniuk

Site update pending.

Information
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Residing in Ruin
A classical conflation of means and forces (Group Photo)
Sample Sampling
And in of the grain a force, and in of the grain a feeling
Untitled (White Flag)
DIRT & DANGER
A Geometry of the Sky
In being draped in being, in being made conditional
The blind pale distances
Opening Closures
How to tie a bow-tie
Run For It
Silver Spoons
Run This Block
Hydration Station
Material Correspondence: Circulation

Research
Synature: Abstract World-Making and the Technical Aestehtics of Land Reclamation
Minor Materialisms: Toward a Theory of Minor Spatial Practice
Aerosolic Antagonisms

Teaching
Art and the Social Production of Space
Studies in Canadian Architecture
Architecture’s Anticipations
Building Nature

Synature: Abstract World-Making and the Technical Aesthetics of Land Reclamation
Synature is a study of the production and representation of nature. The initial case study is a once-industrialized landscape in northern Alberta, Canada. The site has undergone a process of remediation to reintegrate a former oil sands waste disposal site into the wider Boreal ecosystem characteristic of the region. The broader theoretical concerns are for the concept of land reclamation, the technological procedures of environmental transformation, and the aesthetic criteria used to render those procedures invisible and a highly engineered environment as natural.

The site in question is Gateway Hill Park. It is a 104 ha parcel of land roughly 35 km north of Fort McMurray, Alberta. The site was used by Syncrude Canada Ltd. to store overburden, the layers of soil, rock, and vegetation removed from its nearby surface mine sites in order to expose underlying deposits of oil sands. Gateway Hill served this purpose until the early 1980s at which point Syncrude began a long-term remediation process.


Highway planning Syncrude Road near Mildred Lake mine site, approximately 5 km from Gateway Hill (Image ID PA13961.1), 1974, Government photographs records, Provincial Archives of Alberta.