Walker, A., 2024.

Textual Actants: Infrastructures of Contemporary Art Practice. Part 2 - A Tour of the Monuments of Charleroi, Belgium

Text 2 operates in close dialogue with Text 1, but examines the historical circulations of the steel industry itself. It centres on an autoethnographic writing journey to Belgium, both to the suburbs where I grew up and to the former steel making centre of Charleroi, where the steel I-beam (from which the 'I-beam cursor' takes its name) was first produced. There are coincidental parallels between the timeline of the closure of the steelworks in Charleroi and my own move to the UK, in-sync with the Arcelor Mittal Orbit arriving on the skyline of my new home city. Arcelor Mittal was the eventual final owner of the Charleroi steelworks.