This new line of research is a speculative longitudinal documentation of the recovery of the forest after the Christmas bushfires in the Blue Mountains, Australia. During this project I will revisit the same range of sites every 4 weeks, documenting the landscape and post fire recovery.
The Gospers Mountain fire was started by lightning and rapidly developed to an out-of-control fire, which swept, impossible to control, through the forest that had experienced the hottest and driest spring and summer on record, ultimately burning 80% of the Blue Mountains national park, over 512,000 hectares of trees, killing thousands of animals and taking 3 months to fully contain. The scale of the fire is almost impossible to fathom, and could never have been contained by landscape management controlled burns. This is the outcome of anthropogenic climate change. This project is looking for new words for these new climate changed landscapes.
January 2020
Feb 2020
Documenting landscape changes 4 weeks later, and also undertaking a gesture within the landscape: responding to the word ‘Adaption”: recalling that time when the PM of your country spruiked a lump of coal in Parliament.
Above: Documentation from February 2020. The sound was collected on site 1.5 hours before sunset.
I inserted a photographic print on fabric into the burned landscape in a section of the Blue Mountains NSW Australia. These flag-like forms depict a press image of the PM holding a lump of laquered coal in the House of Representatives. These flags were made for Interregnum, a site responsive installation within a former coal-fired powerstation. In this current location they condense community concerns over climate inaction by the current government.
Site visit images:
