"I am still watching ghosts, eyes rimed with salt, homesick... this was never our natural state, our true inheritance... we should not be here..."
While walking around the Circular Key area of Sydney Harbour, I was struck by the disconnect between the crowds of people going about their current-day activities and the deep timelines of the area. Despite the urban infrastructure largely obliterating so much of what, and who, was once there, the power of natural environment remains inescapable, the precariousness of our hold on place seems obvious.
The video footage was shot around Sydney, Melbourne, the Anglesea region of the Victorian coast, Adelaide, the Flinders Ranges, and the coastline of the Fleurieu Peninsula. Many of the scenes were composited and animated from multiple sources. In the face of one of the driest and hottest years on record, the transition from flood to fire seemed to be a fitting visual metaphor to complement the text. Despite the warnings, I doubt many of us expected the reality to be as devastating as it has turned out to be.
• curated selection Ecopoetry Films & Subjectivity: Behind the making Process – REELpoetry 2023 (Houston, February, 2023);
• official selection and finalist, XVII Hombres Videopoetry Award (Abruzzo, Italy, September, 2022);
• official selection, Nature & Culture – Poetry Film Festival (Copenhagen, November, 2022);
• official selection, Unified Filmmakers Festival 2022 – Climate Change (Munich, Germany, May-June, 2022);
• official selection, Unified Filmmakers Festival 2022 – Arlington International Film Festival (Arlington, Massachusetts, September, 2022);
• screened in New Media Lab – Video Art Projects, Municipal Art Gallery Thessaloniki (Greece, May, 2022);
• official selection, REELpoetry Festival 2022 (Houston, TX, February, 2022);
• curated public video art exhibition at Urban Screening 2021-22 (Northbridge Piazza, Perth, WA, December 2021);
• screened at Living With Buildings – Cov – An evening of experimental film (Coventry, UK, 10 November, 2021);
• screened at GlobalConscience.World – Climate Change Music Video Promotion (USA, October, 2021);
• official selection International Migration & Environmental Film Festival (USA, October, 2021);
• exhibited with discussion at Broto Art-Climate-Science: Agency (Cape Cod, May, 2021);
• published in Verity La (February, 2020);
• screened at Lyra ’20: Bristol Poetry Festival – Poetry and Climate (UK, March, 2020);
• short listed and screened at the 8th Ó Bhéal International Poetry-Film Competition (Cork, Ireland, November, 2020);
• official selection, ZEBRA Poetry Film Festival (Berlin, November, 2020);
• selected for Zebra Poetry Film Club on Vimeo channel (2021).
