“From the footnotes of colonial record, flighted, watery and windy flesh of the more- than-human world whispers its stories from the periphery, its subtle and sensuous articulations howling, trilling, sprouting and diving —an embodied declaration of resistance and continuation.”
SPECTRES IN THE STEAM: (RE) PLACING THE STEAM REVOLUTION
Commissioned by the Powerhouse Museum for the EUCALYPTUSDOM publication, Spectres in the steam explores the Posthuman and New Materialist method used to develop video/text installation Place Unknown, which featured in the Steam Revolutiuon room as a part of the 2022 exhibition.
Looking to the limits and violence of colonial records of Steam technology in Australia, the essay considers what becomes apparent when (re)placing the machinery and records of progress, within the myriad forests, rivers and multispecies communities they contributed to the decimation and removal of. Place unknown centered Eucalytp narratives that haunt the steam collection, viewed through two large screens above the steam revolution space at the museum, words traced a canopy line made invisible by colonial progress, tracing the threads of lives across yellow box and red gum, pigmy possum and cicada as they weave between the pistons and tracks of a settlement furiously expanding.
The publication features a static recreation of Place unknown in a poetic form, immediately prior to the accompanying essay.
You can read both here, or purahase the full collection here.