The Age of the Anthropocene

William L. Fox
Director, Center for Art + Environment, Nevada Museum of Art
The Age of the Anthropocene
The Age of the Anthropocene can be said to start in the late 1700s with the laying down of an airborne global
strata of carbon created by the burning of fossil fuels. This geological epoch, as defined by Nobelist Paul
Creutzen, Will Steffan at ANU and others has three distinct stages, each marked not only by changing patterns in
energy consumption, but also by shifts in artistic reactions to them. The Center for Art + Environment at the
Nevada Museum of Art collects, documents, and studies these changes as manifested in contemporary art
projects, including ones from the American Southwest, the United Kingdom, Chile, and Australia.
Biography
William L. Fox, the Director of the Center for Art + Environment at the Nevada Museum of Art in Reno,
Nevada, has variously been called an art critic, science writer, and cultural geographer. He has published fourteen
books on cognition and landscape, numerous essays in art monographs, magazines and journals, and fifteen
collections of poetry. Among his nonfiction titles are Aereality: On the World from Above; Terra Antarctic: Looking Into
the Emptiest Continent; In the Desert of Desire: Las Vegas and the Culture of Spectacle. Fox is also an artist who has
exhibited in numerous group and solo shows in eight countries since 1974.
Fox has researched and written books set in the extreme environments of the Antarctic, the Arctic, Chile, Nepal,
and other locations. He is a fellow of both the Royal Geographical Society and Explorers Club and he is the
recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, National Endowment for the Humanities, and National
Science Foundation. He has been a visiting scholar at the Getty Research Institute, Clark Art Institute, the
Australian National University, and National Museum of Australia.
Associate Professor David Stephenson and Dr Martin Walch
Tasmanian School of Art, University of Tasmania
Immersive models for the representation of complex environments
Complex environments display many layers of natural and cultural history, some of which are not visible to an
uninformed observer, but can significantly enrich the experience and understanding of a particular location or
wider system. How can the hidden layers of information that reveal the complexities of an environment be
represented with a high resolution of detail and data density without compromising clarity? The experience of
being present in such an environment can be awe-inspiring, but to represent this to an audience presents
considerable challenges. Advances in digital technology over the past 50 years have fuelled the development of a
range of immersive cinematic and video-based representational experiences; the spatial origins of these
techniques predate even the invention of photography, and include panoramas, dioramas, and stereoscopic
imagery. From proto-cinematic photography to present day expanded cinema and experimental video, the
potential for temporal manipulation has provided additional methods for creating a profound experience for an
audience. Sound is also an important aspect of our sensory experience, and if presented effectively can amplify the
visual representation of an environment with an immersive audio experience.
Tasmania’s Derwent River is a discrete natural and man-altered water system of beauty and fascination that
covers a remarkable range of environments and histories. The aim of the Derwent project is to produce a new
aesthetic of experiencing this type of complex landscape over time, conveying its rich layering of information with
clarity and impact. We are achieving this by developing a highly portable means of image and sound capture that
creates a powerful immersive representation of an intimate experience of remote environments; a means of
layering additional environmental and historical information within these immersive representations; and a display
approach that can cost-effectively present these immersive experiences in a range of different exhibition spaces.
In doing this, the Derwent project aims to create the first immersive representation of an entire river system,
presented as a 360º video and sound installation.
Keywords: environmental art, immersive video art, landscape art
Biographies
David Stephenson’s photography and video art has been widely exhibited internationally, including solo
exhibitions at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, the National Gallery of Victoria, and the Cleveland Museum
of Art. He has published two monographs with Princeton Architectural Press, New York: Visions of Heaven (2005)
and Heavenly Vaults (2009). Stephenson lives in Hobart, where he is Research Coordinator and Head of
Photography at the UTAS School of Art.
Martin Walch was educated at the Tasmanian School of Art at Hobart, University of Tasmania, attaining a PhD
in Computational Drawing in 2009. He is currently a Lecturer and Course Co-ordinator at the Tasmanian School
of Art. Walch has participated in 18+ group exhibitions including: Photographica Australis Asia Tour, Naarden
Photo Festival Nederlands, ARCO Madrid, Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art; Australian Centre for
Photography, Sydney; SOFA, New York. He is represented in public and private collections including the
Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, the Australian Centre for the Moving Image, the Art Gallery of South
Australia, and The National Portrait Gallery.
Dr Phil Bagust
School of Communication, International Studies and Languages,
Magill Campus, University of South Australia
The ‘Diesel and Dust’ variations: musings on Australian grassy woodland ecology,
settler ghostscapes, rock ‘n roll royalty, nature photography aesthetics and
augmented reality
One abandoned farmhouse amongst many, set in what has been called a ruined, or at least severely
underappreciated, part of the (South) Australian landscape. Yet in spite this, a place that became the subject of
one of Australia’s most recognised ‘nature’ photographs. An image taken by a prominent professional landscape
photographer, emblazoned on the cover of one of the country’s highest selling rock albums, subsequently utilised
in all sorts of promotional and tourist material, and finally adopted by a socially networked general public
exploring new meanings of socially networked place and performativity in ‘augmented reality’.
How does the ‘Diesel and Dust house’ fit into a collision between the Australian landscape painting and
photographic ecological imaginary, new digital geographies, the ongoing public ignorance of native grassy
landscapes in the sustainability debate, and recent (re)use of the same landscape for wind farms? As well as
exploring some of these issues principally utilising typologies of the sublime and the uncanny developed in Giblett
(2002, 2007, 2009), the author has made several visits to the area, the images and commentary from which will
form part of his presentation and which very much represents a work in progress.
Biography
Dr. Phil Bagust’s initial training and professional experience was in Surveying and Drafting. He has subsequently
completed a Graduate Diploma in Regional and Urban Planning, and a PhD in Communications by research at the
University of South Australia.
He teaches in cultural studies, creative advertising, creative industry ethics, science journalism and landscape
architecture. He has a long running interest in South Australian landscapes and urban bush regeneration.
He is co-author of 'The Native Plants of Adelaide' (Wakefield Press, 2nd printing).
Dr Perdita Phillips
Contemporary Artist and Independent Researcher
Walk ‘til you run out of water
This paper brings together notions of dehydration and lostness in outback walking (based on personal
experience) with its ecological counterpoint of the rapid change occurring in our world today. Analogical
comparisons are drawn between the point where walking loses its rhythm (because of exhaustion) with
ecosystems that, too, appear to have lost their way. The intention is to reflect upon some of the assumptions
made about mainstream understandings of wilderness that rely, for example, upon the concept of a ‘balance of
nature’. Questioning whether it is only through rhythmic walking that positive states can occur, it is proposed
that walking out-of-step leads to contrapuntal adjustments that can reinvigorate creative practice, utilising the
same ‘adjustment to failure’ strategies critical to the experimental nature of contemporary art practice. The
continual fine-tuning required for traversing rough ground also reflects the dynamic nature of ecosystems, which
are permanently adjusting to change. Recent ecological theory’s focus on complex adaptive systems -- and
resilience rather than stability -- means that our responses to ecosystems and the pressures we are placing upon
them, must be dynamic, responsive and contingent. Does the sharpness of being without water focus us on the
shifting socio-ecological conditions ahead? Walking and bodily sensitisation to place opens us up to different
spatial and temporal scales. In making linkages with disability philosophy and research into community inaction in
the face of climate change, it is argued that the inflection or break-in-step of a resilient style of walking can also be
employed for creative socio-ecological change. The paper is therefore concerned with developing a richer and
more complex notions of wild-ness.
Biography
Working across the media of walking, sound, installation, photography and drawing, Phillips explores the mutual
relationships between people and the nonhuman world. Exhibitions include In Vetland (solo, Murdoch
University 2009), Visceral: The Living Art Experiment, (Science Gallery, Dublin 2011) and The System of
Nature, (Lawrence Wilson Art Gallery, UWA 2007) and recent books including A simple rain (with Vivienne
Glance 2012) and birdlife (various authors 2011).
Dr Sue Henderson
School of Visual & Performing Arts , University of Tasmania
Cataract Gorge: Imaging the vertical environment - a climber constructs paintings
The Tourism Tasmania Corporate website describes Cataract Gorge as ‘a unique natural formation within a two
minute drive of the city of Launceston’ offering
‘wilderness in the city’ and promotes activities, for example ‘challenge yourself by abseiling or climbing in the
gorge’ and ‘try the short walk through tree fern glades’.
http://www.discovertasmania.com/activities_and_attractions/popular_attractions/cataract gorge
This extract provides specific starting points for a case study examining how we make, imagine, enact and
represent places.
I propose that Cataract Gorge can be understood as a hybrid environment deriving from the combining of the
materiality of the site (‘a unique natural formation’) with cultural practices/ ideas/ meanings and ways of
interacting with the site (the idea of the gorge as ‘wilderness’, the activities of climbing and walking). This
conceptualization of place as derived from the interplay between human activity and a site has parallels with the
activation of vertical space by a climber interacting with a cliff.
In this paper climbing and walking are examined as embodied ways of experiencing a site that include contrasting
perceptual qualities, spatial orientations, associated cultural meanings and traditions of representation. Drawing
on my practice-led research which explores how the perceptions of a climber might affect the constructions of
paintings of a site, I consider how an emphasis on verticality in the landscape might extend pictorial traditions.
Painting processes as options for imaging hybrid environments are discussed in terms of specific qualities that
painting can offer. The interaction of materials (paint, ink) with the presence of the painter can suggest
ephemeral, embodied and subjective experience while performative processes involved in painting can parallel
performative practices occurring on a site.
This paper draws on research from cultural geography and philosophy (B Szerszynski, W Hiem and C Waterton;
M Watson; E Casey; E Grosz), outdoor education (P Martin) and visual arts (P Crowther ; B Bolt).
Biography
Sue Henderson works with various media on paper ranging from large scale ink paintings to ephemeral works.
Her arts practice references ways of interacting with places, with recent work exploring the perceptions of a
rock climber in the landscape. Sue was recipient of a University medal in 2006, graduated with a PhD in visual arts
in 2010 and lectures in drawing at the School of Visual and Performing Arts, University of Tasmania, Launceston.
Dr Lisa Roberts
Visiting Fellow, Living Data project leader, University of Technology, Sydney
Wilderness alive: Reconnecting through a collaborative research practice
When wilderness is dead in the public imagination, then perhaps we are too, in spirit. Spirit can mean liveliness,
or simply Life. A work of art can be defined as complete when it expresses a life of its own, or spirit. The view
that art, science and spirituality are parts of one knowledge system is holistic. Scientists describe the biosphere as
Life and this view is reflected in the iconography of some artists who have worked closely with them. The
scientific method recognises humans as part of the natural world, but the voices of scientists are necessarily
measured. Wilderness may be enlivened in the public imagination when scientific models that predict threats to
its existence are understood in ways that combine logic with spirit. Primal gestural forms that are circling,
spiralling and crossing have been used since ancient times as expressions of connection. They visualise change and
transformation, the very qualities that define life. I show how new meanings are assigned to the ancient forms, in
data sets and iconography that symbolise natural systems and body knowledge of connection to them. I present
art works that resulted from collaborations between scientists and artists, including results from the Living Data
research project. I explain an animation practice that works through symbiotic relationships with scientists and
other artists, and how this contributes to generating new scientific knowledge, and to giving new meanings to
existing theories. I propose that when icons of connection are shared, visualisations can be made that contribute
to animating the public imagination sufficiently to stir global action to sustain, not diminish, wilderness. I hold that
a primal level of connection is essential for many people to make sense of scientific models that predict a future
based on evidence of human impacts on the planet.
Biography
I make art that combines different ways of understanding. Collaborations with scientists and other artists have
evolved from sharing stories, data and iconography. Formal studies include dance, visual arts, animation,
Indigenous perspectives and Antarctic perceptions. My PhD research was practice-based and led to the
development of a lexicon of primal gestural forms that work in various media to develop Living Data: scientific
data combined with expressions of connection.
www.lisaroberts.com.au
www.antarcticanimation.com
www.livingdata.net.au
Loren Kronemyer
Artist, SymbioticA, University of Western Australia
The Surreal Aesthetics of Conservation
Evolution and extinction has always been an ongoing part of life on Earth, but with the rise of humans and our
recent saturation of the planet, these forces no longer operate at a stable rate. Our awareness of this extinction
crisis has led to the birth of conservationism, an interdisciplinary field that strives to maintain and preserve Earth's
biodiversity. Although the objectives of conservation are unquestionably important and valuable, they often
manifest themselves in strange ways that highlight the shifting relationship between humans and our concept of
“nature”. Conservation is intended to preserve the content of the environment in its original state, repairing or
negating damage inflicted by humans. Through many acts of conservation, however, we exercise technological
control over the very systems that we characterise and defend as being "natural", extending human ecological
manipulation instead of curtailing it. Certain examples of the methods and technologies employed in conservation
border on the surreal, and desperate are the lengths to which humans have gone to preserve creatures that are
clearly unsuitable for Earth's altered ecosystems. At what point does a creature's continued existence become so
mediated by science and technology that it becomes yet another human intervention in the environment, as
opposed to something in a truly conserved natural state? And how can we enforce the delusion that there is such
thing as a "natural state" anymore when there is no place on earth left without multiple artefacts of human
impact? Through deconstructing the bizarre and uncanny aesthetics of conservation biology, a clearer picture
emerges of how far we have come in complicating the relationship between humans and other lifeforms.
Biography
Loren Kronemyer is an interdisciplinary artist from California, currently pursuing a Masters of the Biological Arts
degree at the University of Western Australia in Perth. Her work involves poetic, yet absurd interactions
between the individual and the environment, including other humans, animals, and forces of nature. In attempting
to reach across boundaries of time, place, scale, and species, she implicates the dominant cultural forms of the
present to create meaningful documents of alternative relationships to the world.
Professor Marie Sierra
School of Visual & Performing Arts, University of Tasmania
When Waste Returns: Re-imagining ‘use value’ in a tidal river
My interest lies in how the idea of nature is socially constructed. My practice is research-oriented, and focuses on
a specific site or place that has resonance beyond that specificity; the work and context I propose to present is
based on how an area (in this case, a city with a population of 100,000) is defined by two rivers, an estuary, and
the specter of flood.
Of particular interest in my practice is that which Klaus Eder terms the ‘use value’ of the natural world. Rivers
have a clear use value, providing avenues of transport, water to drink, disposal of waste, and irrigation. These
functions are that into which Western cultures have traditionally put stock, bypassing other value systems, such
as those that acknowledge the aesthetic, recreational, or ecological implications of the place made by a river. This
paper examines the disposal function a river performs for a city, within the broader context of a flood, when the
‘use value’ of disposing waste is reversed. Rivers as disposal systems and the social dimension this creates in our
relationship with a nature will be addressed in my own practice, in addition to the work of Anuradha Mathur and
Dilip da Cuhna (of Mathur & da Cuhna architecture) on ‘reimagining’ the flood plain beyond that of a contested
zone.
Biography
Professor Marie Sierra is the Head of the School of Visual and Performing Arts at the University of Tasmania,
Australia (UTAS). Originally from the US, she completed her MFA at the Tasmanian School of Art in Hobart, also
part of UTAS, in 1985. She then moved to Melbourne, where she worked in the School of Art at RMIT University
and the Victorian College of the Arts (VCA) of the University of Melbourne. In both these well known schools of
art she worked in senior roles, including the Head of Sculpture & Spatial Practice, Graduate Research (both VCA)
and Associate Dean for Research (RMIT and VCA). She holds a PhD from the RMIT’s School of Architecture &
Design on nature as a social construct, which is also the focus of her art practice. She has held many solo and
group exhibitions within Australia and overseas, published articles on contemporary art, and won several grants
and awards, including five Australia Council Grants and a an ARC LIEF grant.
Louise Fowler-Smith
College of Fine Arts, University of New South Wales
Re–Cognising the Land. The role of Perception in a new world.
Can the artist change the way society perceives in order to change how we live on the planet?
How we perceive and contemplate the land affects how we treat the land, and ultimately how we live on it. We
are less likely to respect the land if we see it as separate from ourselves. This perception remains pertinent
irrespective of how the land is ideologically managed across cultural divides.
As an environmental artist my work focuses on the veneration of trees, a subject I was drawn to not only for the
magnitude of its environmental significance, but its universal and pan-religious symbolic importance.
This investigation and resultant work has spanned two continents, Australia and India.
In India I have been photographing how trees are decorated as an act of veneration or worship and interviewing
people in the field for the past 9 years. I was attracted to the venerated tree not only for its enchanting beauty,
but its ability to protect trees from loggers.
My article titled "Hindu Tree Veneration as a Mode of Environmental Encounter" was published in the February
2009 issue of Leonardo - The Journal of the International Society for the Arts, Sciences and Technology - Volume
42, Number 1. This can be accessed online at http://www.mitpressjournals.org/toc/leon/42/1 - under general
articles.
In Australia I have been venerating Trees for decades. My artistic output concentrates on images of trees found
predominantly in the arid zone of far western NSW, where I have paid particular attention to ‘forgotten’ trees
and bushes such as the Mulga, with its umbrella like form and isolated existence.
I recently established the Tree Veneration Society in Sydney, which aims to re-contextualise the historical
practice of the worship and veneration of trees across nearly all cultures into a progressive contemporary
community art project. While being environmentally conscious of the value of trees, particularly in inner-city
suburbs, we also hope to bring some sense of the ritual created in forming a cross-cultural celebration of nature.
Biography
I am a Senior Lecturer at the College of Fine Arts, UNSW in Sydney and the Director of the Imaging the Land
International Research Initiative (ILIRI), which aims to promote new ways of perceiving the land in the 21st
century. In 2008 I established the ILIRI ‘Creative Laboratory’ – a large area of land at Fowlers Gap where artists,
architects, scientists - people concerned with the environment – can collaborate on projects that explore new
ways of perceiving, interacting and living in a land starved of water. More information about ILIRI can be found at
http://www.cofa.unsw.edu.au/research/research-units/iliri
Joachim Froese
Queensland College of Art, Griffith University
Constructed Landscapes
This paper presents research for two of my recent photography projects, which respond to widely accepted
perceptions of landscape and nature. It discusses these projects within the art historical discourse of landscape
images from the Renaissance until today and looks at the myths and illusions, which have constructed our view of
the environment we live in.
The concept of nature has always been a construction and European visual culture has interpreted it within
cultural, religious or scientific interests. Until the 19th Century, when its popularity soared, landscape mostly
functioned as a background, into which – as a focus – religious, allegorical or folk scenes were placed. Once
established as a genre in its own right Europeans depicted their own landscape at home as a romantic and
ultimately tamed counterpoint to the developing city life. In contrast, most territories overseas were depicted
from an imperial viewpoint as either wilderness, yet untouched by (European) civilization. While these traditions
can be traced back for centuries, they are still firmly embedded in our visual vocabulary today.
The first of the my projects is a series of photographs taken in National Parks in South-East Queensland, which
shows seemingly untouched nature. Only at a second glance the viewer notices the signs, didactics and hiking
trails within the images, revealing the depicted scenery as a carefully choreographed landscape. The second
project was commissioned by the Regionalpark RheinMain near Frankfurt in Germany for a permanent exhibition
at the Regionalpark Visitors Centre. These images present a hybrid area of urban agglomeration, in which
pockets of nature meet and often clash with human infrastructure and industry. Both projects question
traditional perceptions of landscape in their respective countries and they provide new angles and viewpoints on
how we perceive – or would like to see – nature.
Biography
Joachim Froese is an art photographer who currently lives and works in Brisbane and Berlin. In 1996 he
graduated from the School of Art at Launceston, University of Tasmania with a Bachelor of Fine Arts, majoring in
Photography, and received a Master of Visual Arts at the Queensland College of Art, Griffith University (QCA) in
Brisbane in 2002.
He teaches photography as a casual lecture at QCA since 2007 and has also worked in the same position at the
Queensland University of Technology (QUT) in Brisbane from 2001 to 2003. In 2012 he will conduct a postgraduate
seminar ‘Landscape Photography for Architecture Students’ at the Technische Unversität Darmstadt in Germany.
Ingo Farin & Ilona Schneider
University of Tasmania
Imagining Tasmania: Philosophical Photo-Essay
(An Unorthodox Heideggerian Tour)
According to Heidegger, the domain of dwelling is paramount in human existence. Dwelling with its buildings,
bridges, churches, hangars, harbors, power stations, and its far-flung infrastructure incorporates, shelters, and
exploits the earth. Most importantly, it also reveals the earth on which we live in the first place. Nevertheless, the
earth itself (as water, mountain, land, wind, sea, and air) always recedes and eludes any definitive or final grasp
and fixation. Adopting this view, we argue that some of the most intriguing and crucially contested “places” in
Tasmania (Lake Pedder, Gordan Dam, Mount Lyell, Crotty, Gomanston, Lake Margaret Power Station,
Wybalenna, Oyster Bay) become fully intelligible only from the perspective of the primacy of “dwelling”— this
side of the sterile arguments between defenders of “wilderness” or “nature” and the “avant-garde” of progress,
technology, or “civilization.” Moreover, using the example of Lake Gordon, we also argue that Heidegger’s thesis
of the monotone revealing of nature as “standing reserve” through technology is open to serious doubt and in
need of revision. Dwelling favors sustainability. Our images document the essential tension and intertwining of
earth and technology in dwelling.
Biographies
Ingo Farin studied philosophy in Germany and the USA. He taught in the US at The College of William & Mary,
and St. John's College, Santa Fe. Since 2008 he has been teaching at UTAS. Together with Jim Hart he translated
Husserl's Lectures on Basic Problems of Phenomenology (2006). He recently published a translation of Heidegger's
seminal book The Concept of Time (2011).
Ilona Schneider trained as photographer in Austria. She has worked throughout Europe and Australia as
commercial photographer for 20 years. Over the last years her photographic interests have focused on the
documentation of human relations with our environment. She is currently exploring the history of the human
impact on the landscape in Tasmania. Ilona is currently a student at the Tasmanian School of Art in Hobart.
Lyn McGaurr
PhD Candidate, School of English, Journalism and European Languages, University of Tasmania
From Wild to Mild: The Changing Discourse of Tasmanian Ecotourism in an Era of
Environmental Conflict
This paper considers how marketing Tasmania as “accessible nature” functioned as a discursive strategy during
the state’s forestry conflicts of the 1990s and 2000s. The paper opens by tracing the discourse of Tasmanian
tourism as the business first of “accessible scenery”, then “accessible wilderness” and, finally, “accessible nature”.
It describes how attempts to harness the symbolic power of “wilderness” following the success of the campaign
to save the Franklin River found the government struggling to reconcile the nuances and constraints of that term
with its traditional understanding of tourism. Using the November 1994 World Congress on Adventure Travel
and Ecotourism in Hobart as a case study, the paper then argues that the state tourism department’s framing of
Tasmania’s natural environment as “accessible nature” invoked wilderness for its commercial benefits while
ignoring threats to the state’s “natural” branding from forestry. By representing tourism in World Heritage Areas
and national parks as promoting environmental protection, then subsuming wilderness in a discourse of accessible
nature that also embraced state forests, the government constructed wilderness, ecotourism and recreational
forestry as complementary people-centred projects. Such manoeuvring cast the tourism department and Forestry
Tasmania as colleagues in concern for the environment rather than adversaries in the fight for its protection. But
even as they were bound by a common desire for greater access to natural places, they were divided by
wilderness. For although the tourism department would faithfully promote “nature-based tourism”, including
Forestry Tasmania tourism sites, its reluctance to relinquish the marketing advantages of wilderness would
contribute to its continuing salience and political power.
Biography
Lyn is completing a PhD in Journalism in the School of English, Journalism and European Languages at the
University of Tasmania. A journalist, writer and book editor by trade, her past employers include the ABC,
Lonely Planet, Penguin Books and (from 2002 to 2008) Tourism Tasmania.
Susan Ward
Southern Cross University
Dis-place-ing Australian Television drama and its implication for Imagining
Nature.
A significant proportion of Australian television drama is orientated to interpersonal relations in an exclusively
urban existence. In these urban dramas nature is either obscured from view completely, or relegated—as
landscape—to the role of aesthetic enhancement. This begs the question how might nature be foregrounded in
stories that depict an everyday urban existence? Are current television genres appropriate vehicles for adult
dramas that attempt to articulate an ecological awareness? This paper suggests that blame can be at least partly
attributed to dominant industrial practice that locates domestic drama in a suburbia that is homogenised, nonspecific, and displaced. This representative practice of imagining a national commonality runs counter to claims by
environmental theorists that an environmental awareness and imagination can only be experienced through a
connectedness to place.
This paper brings into this discussion implications from a recent content analysis by researchers at Southern
Cross University and University of Queensland that examines how nature and environmental issues are
portrayed in the domestic soaps Neighbours and Home and Away during the months of June, July, August, 2011.
Biography
Susan Ward is a researcher associate at Southern Cross University and a research affiliate with the Global
Change Institute at University of Queensland. She is co-author of Local Hollywood: Global Film Production and the
Gold Coast with Tom O’Regan and Ben Goldsmith. More recently she has added environmentalism to her
interests in the production cultures of Australian film and television.
Associate Professor Bruce Tranter
School of Sociology and Social Work, University of Tasmania
Searching for Wilderness: environmental conflicts in the print media
Content analysis using keyword searches of The Mercury and The Age newspapers from the late 1980s
demonstrate changes in the frequency and application of the term ‘wilderness’ over time as it relates to
environmental campaigns. Correlation analysis suggests that coverage of ‘wilderness’ has increased in The Age
between 1991 and 2011, while declining over a similar period (1988-2011) in The Mercury. Coverage of ‘forest
protests’ has increased in both newspapers over the same period, but far more strongly in The Mercury. The
implications of these and others findings are discussed.
Biography
Bruce Tranter is an associate professor in the School of Sociology and Social Work, UTas. A quantitative political
sociologist, he has published widely on the support base of environmental social movements and their leaders,
national identity in Australia and its bushrangers, postmaterial value change and political behaviour.
Susan Hauri-Downing & Tarsh Bates
Artists in Residence, Centre for Integrative Bee Research, University of Western Australia
I Lay My Ear to Furious Latin: listening for bees in urban environments
Where do native bees live in contested urban environments? How has the colonisation and urbanisation of Perth
affected native bee populations? What is the nature of the human/bee interactions and what cultural roles do they
play? In the context of a global honey bee crisis, Australian colonisation, and disappearing habitats, a current
art/science residency is investigating the nature of bee populations in urban areas. Whilst there is much publicity
surrounding the global disappearance of the European honey bee, little attention has been paid to native bee
populations and habitats.
Native and feral bees are particularly important in pollinating local flora and contribute to the unique biodiversity
of the South West region. They also hold unique significance for the Nyungar community. Despite the
importance of native bees, little is known about the ecological and cultural consequences of Perth colonisation
and urbanisation on these insects. The relationships between bees, humans and the colonisation and urbanisation
of Perth are complex. Although there are over 2,000 described native bee species in Australia, 800 of which
occur in WA, most are solitary and rarely observed in natural habitats. In fact a new species, the ‘Megamouth’
bee (Leioproctus sp.), was identified in suburban Perth by entomologist Terry Houston and Otto Mueller as
recently as 2010. Nests and habitats are destroyed through landscaping, gardening and land clearing activities.
There is also concern over the displacement of native bees by feral European bees.
This paper describes a project involving artists Susan Hauri-Downing and Tarsh Bates, and the Centre for
Integrative Bee Research (CIBER) at the University of Western Australia which combines the different
perspectives of art and science to explore human/bee interactions, ecologies and place. This paper also discusses
the roles of artists within science research groups and shows some preliminary outcomes of the residency.
Biographies
Tarsh Bates is interested in bodies as material, in interspecies relationality, and in aesthetics of care. She uses
artistic and scientific tools to explore the nexus of bodies, ethics and culture. She has a background in
biotechnology, sculpture and live art and recently completed a MSc (Biological Art). Tarsh is currently a PhD
candidate in the aesthetic experiences of human/non-human relationships.
Susan Hauri-Downing is an Australian artist living in Switzerland. Her artwork has shifted focus over the last
nine years from themes of unsustainable colonial land management practices to explorations of the personal and
cultural implications of the global cultivation of native and foreign plant species, including aesthetics; ties to
‘home’; food security; traditional food availability; materials for artifacts; and medicines.
Raquel Ormella
School of Art, Australian National University
Proposed Title: Bats and Gardens: Dialogical processes and outcomes in
Bat/Human Research
This conference paper examines the artwork Bat/Human Research by Remnant Emergency Artlab1. This work is
aligned with the concerns of Imaging Nature II conference because it explores a situation where a native animal
population is in conflict with a highly engineered landscape. The catalyst for the artwork was the imminent
eviction of a large permanent camp of Grey-headed Flying-foxes from the Royal Botanical Gardens in Sydney,
because the bats were destroying the historical exotic trees were they were roosting. This project therefore had
the potential to examine a range of conflicting natural and heritage values.
Bat/Human Research uses dialogical, rather than representational methods to stage a confrontation, not directly
with the animal subjects, but rather with the human constructions, both ideological and physical, of the local
landscape. I will use Miwon Kwon’s analysis of the ways that site-specific artworks have shifted from physically
located explorations of phenomena, to that of a discursive consideration of context, to discuss how this work
requires not just a sensory, but also a but a critical response from viewers. This shift of the artwork from object
to process, raises concerns with how the work acts, rather than how it looks2.
Remnant Emergency Artlab reduces the larger issue of Grey-headed Flying-foxes species decline, and the
challenge of living in biodiverse cities, to a question of the re-location of particular group of bats. By defining ‘the
problem’ the artwork can be seen to be acting by providing a design ‘solution’, despite not necessarily seeing this
design through to ‘completion’. I will argue that the presentation of a ‘solution’ within Bat/Human Research
curtails the discursive potential of the work to engage the audience in ongoing discussion and reverie, thereby
reducing the work back to an object.
While I contend this work has limitations, I will also examine the ways that Bat/Human Research productively
prompts the audience to consider the positive and negative human impacts on the ecological system that
surrounds them in the urban centre of Sydney.
Biography
Raquel Ormella is a lecturer in the Painting Workshop at the School of Art, ANU. She is currently completing a
PhD that examines dialogical artworks that include living animals. Recent exhibitions include a 3-channel video
Walking through clear fells at CAST Hobart (2011), and Feeders a multi-channel video for the Aichi Triennale in
Nagoya, Japan (2010).
1
Remnant
Emergency
Artlab
is
a
series
six
of
artist
and
designer
driven
projects
that
ran
in
2010
and
2011.
Bat/Human
Research
second
in
the
series,
while
all
of
their
projects
focussed
on
ecological
issues,
only
Bat/Human
Research
was
based
on
interactions
between
animals
and
humans.
http://www.remnantartlab.com/about/
Accessed
January
2012
2
Kwon,
Miwon.
One
Place
After
Another,
Site‐specific
art
and
locational
identity.
MIT
Press:
Cambridge
Massachusetts.
2002
André Krebber
PhD Candidate, New Zealand Centre for Human-Animal Studies
University of Canterbury
‘Owlet Moths, with hair like Hungarian bears’ – Perceiving nature through Maria
Sibylla Merian’s (1647-1717) pictures of Surinamese insects
Science and art provide us with very different, almost diametrically opposed images of nature. Portraying it in
simplified terms, while the former focuses on making nature calculable, the latter approaches nature emotionally.
In modern times, the defining power over images of nature has been assigned almost exclusively to the sciences.
This supremacy has been extensively criticised over the past decades for its anthropocentric and destructive
appropriation of nature. Conciliating approaches, however, often either simply reject scientific approaches to
nature or lead back into a strict scientific perceiving of nature. Looking back to times when the modern scientific
paradigm emerged and not yet prevailed over other approaches to nature might provide us with new, alternative
views.
For this reason, I will turn to Merian’s book Metamorphosis Insectorum Surinamensium (1705). Her folio contains
delicately composed plates depicting Surinamese insects grouped on their feeding plants, accompanied by
elaborate texts further contextualising the research objects. Merian’s work is heavily mediated by art, which has
prompted its dismissal by modern science as naïve. Her watercolours and etchings are of vivid artistic quality,
while her texts deepen the pictorial representation by exerting sensory comparisons. Yet, Merian also provides
information regarding the plants’ utilisation, botanical classifications or suggestions for the insects’ classification,
demonstrating a rational distance to her research objects.
Analysing a plate from the Suriname Book focussing on its knowledge qualities, I will argue that Merian’s approach
supersedes a simple anthropocentric perspective. The insects are represented not simply as specimen, but
Merian’s representations also convey the formers’ individuality, while through emphasising their reproductive
conditions the objects’ own perspective is included. Instead of inciting a dominating view onto the objects, the
viewer is connected with them. Thus, Merian’s work exemplifies art’s potential for promoting an alternative
approach to nature in response to the environmental crisis.
Biography
André Krebber graduated in environmental sciences from the University of Lueneburg, Germany. His interests
are critical theory, epistemology, aesthetics and human-nature relationships. Currently, André is working on his
PhD at the New Zealand Centre for Human-Animal Studies, analysing the influence of epistemology and the
human-animal relationship on societal-nature relations, as a possible response to the socio-ecological problems of
the twenty-first century.
Greg Lehman
PhD Candidate, Tasmanian School of Art, University of Tasmania
Visiting Research Fellow, Australian Institute for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies Canberra
The Conciliation: a gothic tale
Huguenot artist Benjamin Duterrau arrived in Hobart Town in 1832 only to discover he had missed out on an
appointment as Drawing Master at Ellinthorp Hall. So, at age 65, he opened a studio in Campbell St and
commenced Australia’s first public lectures on art. His plaster bas-reliefs and engravings were among the first
sculptural works produced in Australia.
These works depicted George Augustus Robinson, who was celebrated as bringing an end to Tasmania’s Black
War; and the Tasmanian Aborigines who had stood between the British colonists and their new possession. The
culmination of Duterrau’s work was his painting ‘The Conciliation’.
Duterrau is credited by the National Library of Australia with producing ‘the first historical epic painting in the
Australian colonies; (marking) the long path towards legal acknowledgement of Tasmanians of Indigenous
descent.’ However, Duterrau’s interest in Raphael and a possible link with Milton’s Paradise Lost suggests an
alternative reading of this painting; revealing a darker side to Robinson’s legacy and a potent beginning to the
great myth of Tasmanian Wilderness.
Biography
Greg Lehman is an Indigenous Visiting Research Fellow at the Australian Institute for Aboriginal and Torres Strait
Islander Studies, Canberra, and an Honorary Research Associate at the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery. He
is completing PhD research at the Tasmanian School of Art on the visual history of Tasmanian Aboriginal culture.
Dr Julia Peck
University of Roehampton, London
Thornthwaite: Joseph and Ernest Docker’s melancholic wilderness
Joseph and Ernest Docker made photographs of their pastoral property, Thornthwaite, near Scone, between
1860 and 1869. Their small, delicate photographs are presented in album format and depict the homestead from
different angles and from varying degrees of distance. The photographs show the cleared land, a garden, river
scenery and the wider environment, including the Liverpool Ranges to the north. In addition to the circulatory
pattern of photographing the homestead the album of photographs situates Thornthwaite within the wider
Australian environment and wilderness scenery, especially from North America. This paper will argue that the
album of photographs creates Thornthwaite as a wilderness, despite signs of settlement. The Dockers, moreover,
choose a melancholic rather than optimistic tone for their photographs, further enhancing the perception of the
land as isolated and empty. Disavowing the Indigenous understanding of the land (including their prior ownership,
cultural interaction and continued presence within the landscape) the photographs create Thornthwaite as a
romanticised, nostalgic and isolated wilderness space. Indeed, later in his life, Ernest Docker reproduced a
photograph of a river scene taken on Thornthwaite with the title Evenings Shadows, a reference to Stephen
Johnstone’s painting of the same title. Although the paradigm of melancholia has been significant within Australian
literature and painting it is subject to little commentary in relation to photographs. Using Ian McLean’s
proposition of melancholia as denial of Indigenous heritage, this paper will argue that the Dockers’ photographs
work to overcome the horror of dispossession. Whilst the photographs could be seen as a tacit
acknowledgement of colonial guilt, Ernest Docker took a nostalgic pleasure in seeing Thornthwaite as
melancholic, troubling any redemptive interpretation of the images.
Biography
Dr. Julia Peck is Senior Lecturer in Photography at University of Roehampton, London. Her doctoral thesis
examined the visual construction of the Australian landscape in commercial photographic practices. Her
photographic work has been exhibited in the UK and she has contributed images and articles to Next Level, Source
and History of Photography; she has co-edited the Photography, Archive and Memory special issue of photographies
in 2010.
Professor Michael Meadows
Griffith Centre for Cultural Research
Mountain landscapes, the press and the Australian imaginary
This presentation explores ways in which ideas about mountain landscapes and the environment and their varied
relationships with people began to creep into colonial Australia through stories published in the local press. A
marked increase in the frequency of mountain imagery—writings, drawings and increasingly, photographs—is an
important characteristic of the development of the 20th century Australian press, at least until World War II.
Something had drawn people’s attention to high places as never before: the result of a range of often competing
and contradictory discourses—from Aboriginal creation myths, a unique landscape, the influence of European
ideas of landscape and leisure, and charismatic local individuals with a passion for the environment. I will argue
that journalism, as ‘the primary method of framing experience and forming public consciousness of the here and
now’, played a crucial role in this ‘imagining’ process.
Biography
Michael Meadows worked as a print and broadcast journalist for 10 years before moving into journalism
education in the late 1980s. His research interests span journalism theory and practice, media representation of
minorities, media representations of the Australian landscape, and community media audiences, policy and
practice. He is based at the Centre for Cultural Research on Griffith University’s Nathan Campus in Brisbane.
Associate Professor Linda Williams
RMIT University
Reconsidering modernity: the role of magic, desire, and cargo cults in
contemporary ideas of nature.
This paper reconsiders Marxist approaches to urban spatial theory as a means of gauging how well modern
concepts of nature are aligned with the Enlightenment legacy of reason. In particular, it compares Lefebvre’s focus
on the hidden hand of labour in the common perception of urban space with Plumwood’s rethinking of
master/slave relations in the ‘backgrounding’ of nature in modernity. Though such backgrounding would seem to
suggest a rationalist and secular ‘transcendence’ of nature, the paper asks to what extent this rationalism is
undermined by the persistence of magical thinking, desire and nostalgia in images of nature in contemporary visual
culture.
This question is considered with reference to how contemporary art responds to the commodification of nature,
along with the images of ‘unspoiled’ of nature that have emerged as key images of desire in popular visual culture.
Such images may also work as powerful agents of nostalgia in the contemporary context of the city, and the paper
concludes with the question of whether in an era of global climate change the inherent contradictions in the
consumption of such images in the urban context is likely to enhance their power as visual agents of desire, or
whether a potentially heightened public awareness of the anthropogenic causes of climate change could weaken
their impact.
Biography
Linda Williams is Associate Professor of Art, Environment and Cultural Studies at RMIT University, where she
leads a research cluster on Art & Environmental Sustainability and an international ARC Linkage Project: Spatial
Dialogues: Public Art & Climate Change. She has published widely on visual culture, along with publications on
cultural history and ecocriticism—particularly the social histories of human-animal relations\ and the
contemporary issues of climate change and mass species.
Amanda Stuart
PhD Candidate, School of Art, Australian National University
The Dingo, Wilderness and the Colonial Imagination.
How powerful was the Australian colonial imagination in shaping attitudes
towards outsider animals and wilderness?
Famous for breaking boundaries into human domestic terrain, the Australian dingo is an animal that is associated
with wilderness areas and historically charged with negative association.
Contemporary opinions regarding the Australian dingo are highly contentious and range from it being considered
a top order native predator with a valuable ecological role, to vermin and enemy of the sheep farmer. Though
considered nationally as native animal, the conservation status of the dingo is mutable – being acknowledged as a
protected species whilst within National Parks, but vulnerable to strident eradication as a pest animal, when it
strays outside the park boundary.
Contemporary visual representations of dingoes in Australian art are also wide ranging and reflect this complex
discourse. However little is known of historic dingo/wild dog representations that have contributed to the
shaping of present attitudes.
Colonial perceptions of the Australian wilderness were embedded in romantic ideals, but evolved rapidly in the
late 19th century on par with Northern Hemisphere models and philosophies. Despite this, such areas were
viewed in utilitarian terms in Australia. In this paper, I will identify and analyze specific visual representations from
the colonial record that associate the dingo with the notion of the Australian wilderness. I will examine the
cultural, social and political underpinnings at the time of their creation to reveal how the ‘wild’ and ‘other’ is
positioned within the white settler psyche, in the lead up to Federation.
Finally I will consider the implication of such imagery and the attitudes encoded within the colonial imagination,
upon contemporary attitudes towards dingoes and wilderness.
Biography
Presently a candidate for PhD in Visual Arts, my sculptural practice researches the tense relations between wild
dogs, dingoes and humans in the South East of Australia.
My focus on outsider species is informed by my work as a park ranger in NSW and Tasmania. This was crucial in
developing my fascination with species that are reviled by humans.
I have exhibited nationally and internationally, and continue to teach and research at the School of Art, Australian
National University.
Jon R Nyquist
University of Oslo, Norway.
Images of Irreveresible Change: The Uncertain Reality of the Cane Toad Invasion
Environmentalists, scientists and members of the public envisage irreversible change and uncertain futures in the
face of an ongoing and forthcoming cane toad invasion in The Kimberley. The invasive cane toad has reached The
Kimberley and is fast spreading through the region which has often been pictured as the last frontier of pristine
untouched wilderness in Australia. How the cane toad impacts and what can be done are fiercely contested issues
amongst people and groups in the region. A broad community engagement with the issue has been evident the
past 7 or 8 years and is still going as the toads are moving to new towns and communities further west,
threatening diverse images of different naturecultures. Drawing on fieldwork with an environmental organisation
and in several towns and communities in the Kimberley, this paper explores different, contested and partially
connected articulations of differently changing natures. The paper will show some images of nature that is
increasingly dissonant with the pristine, untouched wilderness that the tourist industry portrays and indicate the
complexity of these by looking at how they relate to each other.
Furthermore the paper builds on nonrepresentationalist and posthumanist dispositions to discuss posthuman
humans and nonrepresentationalist representations and to argue that images should be seen as heterogeneous
material assemblages, arbitrarily delimited; and that we should view representations as diffractions instead of as
reflections, and each image as an inventive delimitation, a new and unique event. The cane toad case is a complex
naturecultural hybrid fraught with uncertainty. Representations work to articulate some connections leaving an
infinite number of others as remainders. Representations are thus a way of facing uncertainty making them active
entities able to make a change.
Biography
Jon R Nyquist is a master student of social anthropology at the University of Oslo, Norway. He has done
fieldwork with an environmental organisation in the Kimberley, WA for his theses on the complexities of dealing
with cane toads relating to changing environments, conflicts of control and human-animal relations.
Lucy Bleach
Tasmanian School of Art, University of Tasmania
Acceptable risk
In 1984 the eastern rift zone of Hawaii’s Kilauea Volcano ruptured, releasing a massive lava flow that consumed
the residential subdivision of Royal Gardens on its descent to the ocean. All but one house in the community was
taken.
In January 2012 I undertook a field trip to Kilauea, famous as the world’s most accessible and consistently active
volcano, to form part of my arts-based research of communities that live in proximity to active volcanoes,
reflecting on human engagement with tenuous, contingent and at times volatile environments (natural and built).
Ironically Kilauea was sleeping in January, so instead of watching the spectacle of molten rock, I observed the
collective daily disappointment of thousands of tourists who, on arrival at the point of proximity to the earth’s
visceral interior, grappled in diverse ways to deal with a landscape not behaving as presented in marketing images.
The shift between expectation and re-discovery of an actual environment, with its subtle yet complex
experiences, was an intriguing exercise of grafting, re-capturing and souveniring intimate/real encounter of a
highly mediated landscape.
During this time I received a lead to a man named Jack Thompson, the sole resident of the ruined Royal Gardens,
whose house is a remnant oasis in a sea of hardened lava. I tracked Jack down and the resulting interviews, video
recordings, archival footage of the 1984 lava flow and media coverage around his self-proclaimed situation of
living with acceptable risk, informs current studio-based research.
This paper will present the multiple views of a provisional landscape: the suspended reality presented via
marketing strategy; the frisson of disaster vicariously experienced via media spectacle; the attentive scientific
monitoring of the shifting dynamic forces; and the framing versus reality of Jack Thompson’s lava oasis. The paper
will reflect on how these views feed into the new body of artwork, Acceptable Risk.
Biography
Lucy Bleach has maintained an active and experimental art practice since completing her BFA (COFA) and MFA
(Tasmanian School of Art) where she is an Associate Lecturer in Sculpture.
Bleach has produced solo commissioned work for the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, Iteration:Again and
undertaken an Asialink Residency in Japan where she participated in the 4th Echigo-Tsumari Triennial. Lucy Bleach
has been the recipient of several Australia Council and Arts Tasmania grants, and received the 2010 Qantas
Foundation Contemporary Art Award.
Dr Kate Booth and Dr Stewart Williams
School of Geography and Environmental Studies, University of Tasmania
A more-than-human political moment (and other natural catastrophes)
During the Black Saturday bushfires that swept south-eastern Australia in February 2009, the world in which
people controlled their own constructions against the backdrop of nature – an ordering that appeared so
complete – was revealed as anything but the whole. Some houses survived for reasons that defied human
reckoning and some people survived by crawling into wombat burrows. In the moment of ‘natural’ disaster it was
a myriad of seemingly novel voices, including those bound up with the burrowing wombat, which spoke of the
possibility of survival. The forest, once inaudible as ‘nature’ or ‘conservation zone’ – a silent backdrop for human
habitation – was heard amidst the agency of burning.
In this paper, we argue that such ‘natural’ disasters hold the possibility of being one of Jacques Rancière’s political
moments – moments of radical disruption within which the ordering of things is radically re-ordered. This
includes disruption of attempts to allocate and confine wildness to wilderness areas and zones, and a radical reordering within which the world emerges as wild.
Wildness is a notion that has often been conflated with the concept of wilderness. Yet the very character of
wildness defies containment and as such is always on the verge of asserting itself not simply as a part of
wilderness, but as some kind of whole – a whole akin to the more-than-human relational perspective of posthumanism. From such a perspective, wilderness cannot be understood in terms of the ‘received wilderness idea’ –
the one that encompasses preservation for recreational purposes, spiritual, experiential aesthetics and for artistic
endeavour (Nelson and Callicott, 2008), but as one that identifies wilderness as a prison within which wildness or
‘nature’ is confined (Birch, 1998).
Biographies
Kate Booth is a Lecturer in the School of Geography and Environmental Studies. She is engaged with
posthumanist thought, and how such thought emerges within, and may inform ecophilosophy – particularly Arne
Naess’s gestalt ontology. She remains preoccupied with the constituting role of place and how it is possible to
know self in relation to place (or place in relation to self).
Stewart Williams is a lecturer in Human Geography at the University of Tasmania, Australia. His academic
work has appeared in such peer-reviewed journals as Australian Geographical Studies, Geographical Research, Social
Forces, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, Housing Studies, Local Global: Identity, Security, Community, and
the International Journal of Housing Policy.
Dr James McArdle
School of Communication & Creative Arts, Deakin University
The liminal wilderness of railway corridors
On the margins of railway corridors exists a liminal wilderness. Wild escapees from the domestication of gardens,
this biota and vegetation succession is largely uncultivated, but rich. In fact the ecological value of such sites
improves after a few decades of being in a neglected derelict state, mainly determined by the spontaneous
development of biotopes, leading to great biodiversity in flora and fauna (Kowarik, 1995; Tikka et al., 2001; Zerbe
et al., 2002). Yet it exists so close to the crowds fleeting by in the carriages of trains, commuters going out and
traveling home. These human occupants are also 'in the wild'. Their relationships in this setting are wary and
limited. What does a contemplation of the relationships between the people and what becomes temporarily their
environment bring to bear on the idea of wilderness in a social and ecological sense?
Michel de Certeau establishes in “Railway Navigation and Incarceration” a useful perspective from which to make
this analysis through his idea of the static-in-motion of the train traveller; “Immobile inside the train, seeing
immobile things slip by”. In contemplating this transfixion, he adapts Merleau-Ponty’s figure of the Chiasm,
manifested as the glass of the carriage window and the steel rail, to account for the way immobility crosses
between near and far, between speed and stasis. How does art manifest and contribute to these ideas?
The paper will refer to imagery by Daniel Crooks and to ‘Im/mobile’ (James McArdle 2011/12) in which the
author uses a technique that 'dissolves' the vehicle and reveals the temporary human interactions in the state of
transit amid reflections and glimpses of the railside vegetation. With time it became clear this method opens a
window into the 'wild' social relations of passengers amid the wilderness associated with particular urban lines.
Michel de Certeau, 'Railway Navigation and Incarceration' in The Practice of Everyday (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1984) 111-114.
Kowarik, I., 1995. On the role of alien species in urban flora and vegetation. In: Pyšek, P., Prach, K., Rejmanek, M.
& Wade, M. (Ed.), Plant invasions. General aspects and special problems (pp. 85-103) Amsterdam: SPB Academic
Publ.
Tikka, P.M., Hogmander, H. & Koski, P.S., 2001. Road and railway verges serve as dispersal corridors for grassland
plants. Landscape Ecology, 16 (7), 659-666.
Zerbe, S., Maurer, U., Schmitz, S. & Sukopp, H., 2002. Biodiversity in Berlin and its potential for nature
conservation. Landscape and Urban Planning, 62, 139-148.
Biography
James McArdle investigates perceptual and metaphoric uses of focal effects and differences between human and
camera vision. He employs multiple and overlapping, converging viewpoints to create a moire depth contour; and
rotational motion perspectives as seen by a moving observer. These research findings are the subject of
international exhibitions and publications. He is Associate Professor in the Image, Deakin University.
Dr Megan Keating
Tasmanian School of Art, University of Tasmania
Nature Strip: imagining weeds
The concept of a weed can be defined in many ways, but most of these definitions highlight the relationship
between plants and human behaviour. In its simplest form a weed is “ a plant growing where it is not desired”3,
and we often attribute negative descriptions to them such as undesirable and ugly as well as moral judgements
that contribute to them being much more than a simple annoyance.
In his book The End of the Wild, Stephen Meyer refers to the weedy species as the botanical motif of the
Anthropocene4. As a species they have globalised ecology and are re-defining the concepts of nature and
wildness.
This paper will examine the representations of weeds within contemporary arts practice as a means to discuss
the contested character of the natural environment. This paper will also contextualise these ideas through my
current body of work Nature Strip.
Biography
Dr Megan Keating was born in Sydney, Australia where she worked in a design studio before attending the
National Art School. She graduated with a PhD from the University of Tasmania in 2003 where she is currently
the Head of Painting and Acting Head of Printmaking. Dr Keating is also a multidisciplinary artist crossing
installation, painting, and paper cutting.
3
4
Buchholz,
K.P.
1967,
Report
of
the
terminological
committee
of
the
Weeds
Science
Society
of
America.
Weeds
15:388‐389.
The
Anthropocene
is
the
current
geological
age
that
is
marked
by
sustained
human
activity.
Dr Helen Merrick
School of Media, Culture and Creative Arts at Curtin University
The garden as contested zone: Nature and gardening in sustainable living
movements
there is no garden and never has been…
(Donna Haraway The Haraway Reader, New York: Routledge, 2004: 83)
In an environment of increasing awareness of climate change, many Australians are rethinking their lifestyles in
attempts to find more sustainable ways of living. Such efforts often centre around gardens – their own,
allotments, or community gardens. Permaculture, organic gardening, and the simple living movement all situate
the garden as an important site of engagement with nature: whether as a route to ‘reconnect with nature’, or to
emulate natural systems in designing how we plant and grow food. Because permaculturalists and sustainable
living adherents are focused on systems of production, they offer alternative constructions of nature to those of a
primarily conservationist environmental ethic.
As a feminist critic, sustainability advocate, and avid gardener, I am drawn to consider the tensions between my
theory and praxis when it comes to thinking about nature. To read critics such as Haraway, Latour and
Plumwood, alongside the practice of permaculture and sustainability activism generates both resonances and
contradictions. In this paper I explore the constructions of nature produced through permaculture writings and
sustainability publications such as Earth Garden and Grass Roots, as mediated through my readings of critics such as
Haraway.
Haraway argues that the “reality of nature” cannot be apprehended separately from the nature that has been
produced through, and by, western scientific discourses. Increasingly, our “naturecultures” are also mediated by
environmentalist productions of nature, which (although more appealing), are still removed from, and not
collapsible to, nature’s “reality”. For, whether gardeners, environmental activists, or critics, we “must find
another relationship to nature beside reification and possession … Neither mother, nurse, nor slave, nature is
not matrix, resource, or tool for the reproduction of man” (Haraway 2004: 64, 65).
Biography
Helen Merrick is a Senior Lecturer in the school of Media, Culture and Creative Arts at Curtin University in
Western Australia. Much of her work engages with understandings of nature, through feminist science studies,
science fiction and sustainability. Publications include the edited collection Women of Other Worlds: excursions
through science fiction and feminism (1999), the Hugo-nominated The Secret Feminist Cabal: a cultural history of science
fiction feminisms (2009), and the co-authored book Beyond the Cyborg: Adventures with Haraway forthcoming from
Columbia University Press.
Rupert Summerson
Faculty of Architecture, Building and Planning, The University of Melbourne
Is Antarctica still a symbol of the great wilderness?
At the 32nd Antarctic Treaty Consultative Meeting, held in Baltimore in April 2009, Prof. Dr Karin Lochte, the
Director of the Alfred Wegener Institute in Germany, gave the SCAR lecture. This is a very prestigious lecture,
given by an eminent scientist to the delegates from the 50 member countries of the Antarctic Treaty System. The
first slide in Prof. Lochte’s presentation read:
“Is Antarctica still a symbol of the great wilderness and the pristine environment? No, Antarctica is inextricably
linked to global atmospheric, oceanographic and climatic processes and therefore exposed to the impact of
human activities in the rest of the world!”
The Protocol on Environmental Protection to the Antarctic Treaty, which came into force 1998, provides
protection for the wilderness values of Antarctica and yet, 14 years later, no systematic protection has been put
in place. There seems to be little enthusiasm among the Committee for Environmental Protection, established to
oversee the implementation of the Madrid Protocol, for establishing protection for wilderness. Has the case for
the protection of wilderness in Antarctica been lost even though an international treaty mandates it?
In this paper I review the evidence for Prof Lochte’s statement and I will argue that although there may be
evidence for worldwide human activity in Antarctica, specialised equipment is needed to detect it. Perceptually,
most of Antarctica is as it was at the time it was first discovered. Human activity in Antarctica has however been
increasing, especially by national Antarctic programs, and it is their activities, ostensibly in support of science, that
are degrading wilderness more than anything else.
Drawing on the results of an international survey on wilderness in Antarctica and visibility modelling in a
geographical information system I will present an estimation of how much wilderness has been lost.
Biography
Rupert Summerson first went to Antarctica in 1980 and has visited the continent eight times in a variety of roles
and has lived there for three and a half years, including three winters. He is currently trying to finish his PhD on
wilderness and aesthetic values in Antarctica.
Liz Charpleix
PhD candidate, University of New England
The Wild, Wild East: Is There Wilderness on Freycinet Peninsula?
Is wilderness dead? Can wilderness exist in a space contested by human and non-human demands?
European history shows that if humans can put a price on something and sell it, they will. On the other hand,
Aboriginal culture sees land as ‘country’, a living entity which nourishes all its inhabitants, plant, animal or mineral.
Country is Us, not Other, and should neither be sold nor subjugated.
Encroachments into the natural environment by human activities can take one of three forms:
• keep wilderness areas ‘intact’ and sell the wilderness experience for whatever price the market will bear
OR
• civilise the wilderness and make money from the resulting tamed land OR
• understand that there is no wilderness, and (re)discover a mutually nourishing relationship with country.
I choose to examine images which explore representations of these three approaches to the Freycinet Peninsula.
This work arises from PhD research I am undertaking through UNE, looking at how water on the Freycinet coast
has been valued by its users over time.
From the 1807 engraving of Schouten Island by Charles Lesueur, through tourist promotions over the subsequent
two centuries, to the wilderness photography of the 21st century, representations of the Freycinet Peninsula have
commonly depicted the area as wilderness, albeit of a benign nature. Never mind that it has been mined, farmed,
whaled, sealed and fished, had railways, bridges, roads and airstrips built throughout its length, been sliced into
house lots, camping grounds and luxury resorts, it is still a place where people go to escape into the wild.
My paper will investigate how truthful the representations of a wild Freycinet really are, and whether it is possible
to maintain its wildness into the future in the face of inexorable human encroachment.
Biography
Liz Charpleix is a fourth generation Tasmanian. Many holidays since childhood have been spent camping and
bushwalking in the wild and not-so-wild areas of Tasmania, the mainland and overseas. With degrees in English,
Fine Arts and Accounting, she is now undertaking a PhD drawing on all three disciplines, exploring the range of
values placed on water by its users on the Freycinet coast.
Professor Jamie Kirkpatrick
School of Geography and Environmental Studies, University of Tasmania
Life among the gum trees’: interagencies between eucalypts, householders and
real estate agents
Life among the gum trees may be regarded as dangerous by those working in the Fire Service, but is widely used
as a selling point by real estate agents. How do those who succumb to the lure of this nature attractor feel about
their gum trees once ensconced in their tastefully concealed houses? What forms do the interagency between
occupant, tree and real estate agent take? Questionnaire and tree survey data suggest that distant fondness can
transmogrify into immediate fear and that large eucalypt life expectancy is poorer in the suburbs and exurbs than
in State Forest. There is a group of house owners who would rather risk conflagration than lose the delights of
scented foliage and the animals that inhabit it. However, the rapid rate of turnover of home ownership in
Australia will soon result in occupants who are less sanguine about risk or less attached to the aesthetics and
morality of Australia’s companion tree.
Biography
Jamie Kirkpatrick is Distinguished Professor in the School of Geography and Environmental Studies at the
University of Tasmania, where he teaches in the undergraduate program and supervises 15-20 postgraduate and
honours students working on a variety of topics. His main research loves are ecology, socio-ecology and political
ecology, particularly of native vegetation and gardens.