The development of Johannesburg’s landscape, since the discovery of gold in 1886, has been defined by forces of modernisation and an ethic of extraction. From the city’s earliest inception as a mining camp, prospectors have gathered around this site of extortion: the extortion of both faceless human labour and of minerals from below the surface of the earth.

This design-research project traces two simultaneous investigations. It explores ways in which these extractive relationships define the oppressive domination of people and the landscape, resulting in intertwined human and environmental conditions of toxicity. In response, the project proposes a radical, speculative alternative in which human and nonhuman, living and non-living subjectivities are afforded a voice within this environment.

Within this process lies a second aspect of investigation, which explores the ontologically generative nature of design, and how it holds the potential for an emancipatory reimagining of alternative ways of coexisting in this toxic environment.