‘We are contaminated by our encounters…’ writes Anthropologist Anna Tsing in ‘The Mushroom at the End of the World’.
Sidebody is a remote love-letter to a tree, Pycnantha acumunata, a rare plant in the New Caledonian rainforest, evolved to absorb toxic levels of nickel from the rocky soil, to such a high level that it bleeds blue nickel-rich sap when cut. This line of research is a communication to that tree, a distanced letter in pandemic and climate concerned times, a call to dwell between Linnean kingdoms- animal, plant, mineral- and to speculate mytho-poetically on proximal interdependencies, modes of restitution and gestures of care.
Writer Jamie Sutcliffe discusses ‘magical-critical’ as a mode to critically approach the complications and contradictions of contemporary life. In an aligned way Sidebody projects a space between the recently uncovered molecular-level science of phyto-accumulation and the potential, almost-magical opening of the territory between categories of things.
The Forest’s Edge
(looped video+sound 2022)
There’s a tree in the forest that accumulates toxic levels of nickel from the soil around its roots. There’s a girl who is concerned for her future air. There’s a lyrebird that perfectly mimics a baby’s cry; the forest historian at the netted edge of his forest.
Working with recent research from the University of QLD Sustainable Minerals Institute. For scientific and research background see HERE
For related research on lyrebirds and singing songs to glaciers, see HERE
