Tide

What happens if we allow a site to speak for itself? TIDE was the final outcome of a practice led PhD that interrogates the concept of inspirited landscapes in an Australian context. Inspirited in the sense that the spirit of a site may be enlivened by invoking the memories and histories that hide embedded in its layers. Jill Bennets notion of ‘affective encounters’ are central to the investigation where two site-responsive events have been created to demonstrate how historical affect and cultural memory—flow not only through bodies and singular subjects but through transactive spaces and places. The research is concerned with those acts of attention that demand we look outwards rather than inwards - from the body to the site- from the site to the culture. This final installation, The grass circle at Royal Park, Melbourne has been mapped as an affective field in which its historical points of connection and amnesia are re-activated and distilled through installation. If the affective field is viewed as a net of connections, when we burn or create trauma in one section of the net it will impact upon the whole. The creative practice is working through modes of creative engagement designed to draw attention to the specific way in which these affects imprint upon the social/cultural space and the affective field in a given site. If trauma can mark the body, then it certainly marks the land. The creative practice demonstrates how this specific parkland is reflective of a shared and remembered history, but also deeply revealing of our ‘Real, our amnesia, what is forgotten, ignored or silenced. The Royal Park Grass Circle was Corroboree ground of the Kulin Nations and permission to develop TIDE on this country has been granted through consultation with Elders at the Wurundjeri Tribe Land Compensation and Cultural Heritage Council Incorporated. Warmest thanks to Matty Scott and Kirsten Prins for your endless support artistically and personally throughout the development of this project. Thank you also to my principle supervisor Jondi Keene and associate supervisor Rea Dennis for your invaluable guidance. Thank you to Ashley Coote at the City of Melbourne, Chris Nicolson at SERCO and all those who have generously offered their time in support of this installation on site. TIDE has been created on the traditional lands of the Kulin Nation. We offer our respect to the Elders of these traditional lands, and through them to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples past and present.