The April Forecast by Pierce Eldridge

Making the Strange

In a time of global ecological crisis, we need to acknowledge human intervention of the non-human as responsible for climatic devastation. More than ever, we need arts practice to acknowledge its involvement in (re)thinking and shaping our futures.

I’m always thinking about the collapse of ancient biodiversity and the devastation of indigenous wisdoms, how can’t you be in a time of such political debate, as the Paris agreement to limit greenhouse gas emissions looks unachievable with drastically accelerating warming? It’s time to admit that we don’t have the situation under control, and that we are bound to face further consequences if we proceed with business, and arts practice, as usual. We’re arriving at the threshold, the turning-point, of our ecological capacity and we must make substantial change now for the preservation of future generations.

Over the last decade we’ve experienced unprecedented wildfires take flame to homes; displacing families and killing natural wildlife. We’ve seen irresponsible shipping cargo neglectfully spill barrels of oil into pristine lagoons and oceans; swallowing aquatic creatures and bleaching coral life-forms. All whilst flash flooding, harsher storms, claustrophobic droughts, and other unpredictable weather conditions become a common occurrence in our lives. Such disasters globally are becoming more and more catastrophic as they reach a critical climax.

Our life-force, and that which we are yet to understand intimately of the forest, desert, earth, bushland, ocean, even the weeds that forage a way into our manicured gardens, haven’t failed us, we are failing them.

It’s often I wonder, is it the monumentality of this moment too much to bare? Is legislating against ecocide, the destruction of a natural environment by deliberate negligence from human action, enough to enforce us with a backbone to make personal changes? Or is the communication between plants, and the teachings of ecosystems, so invisible that we disregard the safety and care of them because we’re not yet capable of deciphering their greater meaning?

This is where arts practice makes radical shifts in our consciousness, bringing the invisible visible. This is where arts practice finds greater meaning through the power of queering things, or making the strange.

I was speaking recently with an ecologist, their work is focused toward the studies of tropical ecology and the biodiversity patterns in ecosystems, and they expressed thinking through the imagination as a way of substantiating their findings. ‘I sometimes think of the future of tropical forests as a heroes journey against all odds but there is hope with a resurrection theme at the end.’ It’s inherently human to be this way, to imagine great solutions of restorative action in an interconnected world.

She goes on to say, ‘after 20 years as a scientist, I have discovered that facts don’t seem to have the influence on human behaviour that art has.’

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MEET THE ARTIST: PIERCE ELDRIDGE

Pierce Eldridge (b. Brisbane, 1995) is an Australian photographer, writer and curator currently based on Gurambilbarra & Yunbenun Country, in Townsville QLD. Pronouns are They/Them. They are studying a Masters in Curating Contemporary Art, at the Royal College of Art (London), via correspondence (due to COVID19 restrictions).

Pierce’s current curatorial practice is involved within the discourse surrounding indigenous wisdoms and collective remembering, the study of ecological connections between the non-human to human, volcanology as metaphor when thinking through climax and the microscopic catalytic releases which boom across the Anthropocene, and is focused on identifying how we can build arts practice that is phenomenologically embodied.