ABSTRACT
This chapter moves on from exploring the material affinities of bounded, discrete objects to think about the affinities and connections embedded and weaved both physically and sometimes imaginatively within the very material characteristics and ‘fabric’ of objects. Through a broad focus on ‘layers’ and ‘leaking’, it illustrates how objects have the capacity to perform and transform. Such objects and their layers, fibres or particles may not be visible. Indeed, to the everyday person, they may be ‘nothing’ – ignored, unseen, hidden – but, as I illuminate, they have potency, and their material affinities and connections should not be ignored. Drawing on research on hair, I illustrate how hair silently narrates its history through its layers, revealing both physical and imaginative connections to other people, places and practices. I argue that whilst hair’s bodily status affords it very particular corporeal characteristics, this notion of the material affinities as layered within objects can also be applied to more ‘inert’ things, such as those that have been repaired or upcycled. From ‘layers’, we move on to ‘leaking’, exploring how the leaking or shedding of objects can occur in many forms. Broken household objects left in transitional zones around the home, caught between the possibilities of repair versus disposal, can threaten the material affinities and connections they have afforded in the past. Objects leak in other ways – hair, dust, fibres and other forms of detritus all ‘leak’ from objects and people. Such matter has the ability to travel, fascinating and repulsing us in the strange places it turns up in, conjuring imaginaries of unknown others. Yet not all detritus is visible. Nor are all objects what they seem. Drawing on my work on plastic, I explore how plastic is often ‘hidden’ in objects, difficult to determine and sometimes mimicking other materials. Plastic also has the capacity to leak, releasing invisible fibres that have transformative effects. This invisible, hidden ‘other’ threatens the social order, causing anxiety because of their invisible power to travel and to contaminate.
