My installations that invite communal or individual participation to explore how immersive creative practice, futures and design can be used to encourage cognitive shifts that stimulate a ‘negative capability, a concept which prizes intuition and uncertainty above reason and knowledge.’ (Keats, 1817)  

Keats coined the term negative capability in a letter he wrote to his brothers George and Tom in 1817.  Inspired by Shakespeare's work, he describes it as “being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason.”  Keats uses negative here not in a pejorative sense, but as the ability to resist explaining away what we do not understand.

FORESIGHT

BARI Festival
Brisbane

The Foresight installation took place as part of the BARI Festival to consider water scarcity and abundance and alternative futures to water usage. Communities were offered an immersive experience, swimming amongst the light and sound installation during the event.

Installed in the heritage listed Spring Hill Baths, built in 1886, the installation aimed to activate the space and open up a discussion about what our world could feel like, and inspire people to help shape it for the better in a playful and future thinking way when thinking about water.  It asked how Australian urban and rural communities could evolve with their fragile environments, and with ongoing water shortages or increases in water that disruption brings. It sought to counter an emerging perspective where the future is no longer something we shape through positive insights or choices, but rather something confined to narrow perspectives or threats.

DEAR CLIMATE 

School of Visual Arts’ Visual and Critical Studies Residency
New York, New York

Dear Climate is an installation re-imagining the wishing well. This work explores the concept of the human-nature relationship and shifts in climate through a wishing well situated in the waters of the Hudson River, inviting community to make a wish on behalf of the climate.

Installed at Chelsea Piers in the waters of the Hudson River, New York.  

STRATEGIES FOR THE FUTURE

c3 contemporary art space
Melbourne, Australia

Exhibited at c3 contemporary art space in Melbourne considers how the manifestations of myths, such as astrology, and popular culture are explored in the writing of French Philosophers Roland Barthes and Michel Serres.  Originating from an astrological chart, provided by Argentinian astrologer Corina Mascotti, this projection, prints and sound works maps the location of the planets and their symbolic meanings.  This potentially reveals a future prediction which allows different elements or ideas to emerge. It provides an opportunity to consider new pathways bringing us closer together as individuals, as discussed in Serres, and invites participants to pause and reflect on the role we are playing on contributing and addressing collective problems.   

Concept, prints and sound 
Caroline Austin, Fiona Jeanne Grisard, Mabel Frautsch. Projection Peter Thiedek