The recurring theme of identifying new frameworks of thinking about our selves and our relationships to each other and the planet was evident in another show at the Edinburgh Centre for Carbon Innovation (ECCI). Using salvaged steel and found objects “CONATUS”, “CONSILIENCE” and “AFTER THE STORM” – (All 2016) are each concerned with material truths about the nature of growth, change and impact of human species on the earth’s natural systems.

“HYPEROBJECTS: REPRESENTED IN 21 CUBES” relates to the writings of Timothy Morton and a group of philosophers known as “Speculative Realists”. 

A series of cubes were arranged outside and left to decompose for several weeks leaving smaller cubes peppered around the grounds referencing the “non local”, “viscous”, “inter-objective” nature of Morton’s “Hyper Objects” those entities such as Climate and radioactive waste that profoundly impact our lives and the more-than-human world in which we live and yet are so massively distributed in space and time as to be imperceptible directly by humans. (Morton 2013)

“CONNATUS” or “THE NEXUS OF HUMAN AMBITION AND THE EARTHS CAPACITY TO SUSTAIN IT” , Steel, (2016)

With “CONNATUS” or “THE NEXUS OF HUMAN AMBITION AND THE EARTHS CAPACITY TO SUSTAIN IT”: a sequence of “Necker Cubes” act as an optical illusion appearing to change orientation every 3 seconds. They create a sense of the uncanny that references instability in the “Anthropocene” in which climate change could be seen as a symptom of capitalism and human population growth, the resulting environmental impacts of which now threaten to undermine the earth’s natural systems on which we rely.

The series of Interconnected cubes increase in size, expanding with the “golden” ratio of 1.618 – precariously resting on the corner of what appears to be a massive submerged cube – referencing tipping points, melting ice-caps, rising sea levels and titanic hazards that are not fully understood. The spatiotemporal gap between event Vs perceived impact also picks up on the Merkwelt / Wirkwelt concept of Barbara Adam’s ‘Timescapes of Modernity’ which criticises the use of  ‘cause & effect’ as a narrative framing device and the failure of  ‘environmental impact assessments’ to fully account for the “horizon of events” that result in cascading impacts that are often indirect, non-proportional, nonlinear and non local (B Adam 1998)

“CONSILIENCE”, Steel (2016)

In “CONSILIENCE” : A series of steel bars twisted by hand to form a mutually supporting interdependent framework could be seen as representing a unity or “jumping together” of knowledge, a “federation of actants” (Bennett 2010) or one of Debhora Bird-Rose’s “multi species knots of ethical time” (Rose 2012)- i.e the interactions and textures in a self willed landscape that make you feel “part of the feast” (Plumwood, n.d.) Alternatively it could be read as a heuristic model of model of matter at the subatomic scale in which structure  emerges at the intersections of discretely quantised particles or covariant quantum fields. 

With “AFTER THE STORM” or “THE GREAT ACCELERATION AS SYMBOLISED IN A FOUND OBJECT” Russell presents a meter-long iron fencepost found entangled in the roots of a Scots Pine tree blown down in a recent storm.

The piece mirrors the “hockey-stick” graphs of 24 global indicators (i.e atmospheric CO2 concentration, deforestation, ocean acidification as well as storm frequency) that chart the “Great Acceleration” which began around the 1950s when our human socio-economic impact on the planet began to grow at exponential rates.

Physical chemical and biological processes are decomposing the artefact and returning the iron to the soil connecting us to geological time and inviting us to contemplate its simple, imperfect beauty and the perpetually transient nature of existence.