Living in a post bushfire Australia and a world currently experiencing the largest pandemic seen in almost a century has been quite strange. It is simultaneously scary and far out of reach, and to be honest is quite a strange sensation to feel such a strong disconnect from these things that are happening or have happened so close to home. I am privileged to have not had to experience and endure the trauma that others have when faced with the bushfires and covid-19 pandemic, and as I sit at home in isolation I feel very disconnected from others and what they have experienced. I am trying very hard to stay connected with family and friends as well as the outside world, but I cant help but feel a very powerful disconnect. There is so much fear and confusion in the media and in the public, as no one has experienced a pandemic like this before, it all feels quite surreal and dreamlike.
A good thing that has come out of this experience of home isolation however, is that I am thinking a lot more on things that I generally wouldn’t have the time to seriously consider and ponder. I have so many questions rushing through my head; what will this pandemic mean for our environment, will a positive change come from this? What does this mean for my future? What is it that captivates and excites me in life? So many questions and yet I have the answer to none of them. I have enjoyed however, having the time to think and question things for myself, as I am not currently bombarded by the distractions and situations that come from everyday, pandemic-free life.
Recently I have been experiencing an almost instinctual answer to the questions I have been posing to myself. And thus, when I ask myself what captivates me or has captivated me in my life so far, my mind tends to lead me to think of old memories and photographs. In high school I had a great passion of documenting my adventures and experiences through photography. I mostly documented trips with friends or my experiences in nature, and most of the time through 35mm film. As a poor 17 year old I couldn’t afford a DSLR, so I instead opted to use my parents old Pentax ME Super, a 35mm film SLR. I documented everything and I was always so excited to get my film developed.
When I think about it some of my happiest memories have been from documenting time spent with friends. And as I become more uncertain about the world around me and how much time I have left to spend in relative ecological normalcy, I realise that I want to spend that time documenting memories with friends, and experiencing the world around me. I have been experiencing a lot of ecological anxiety and grief; I feel as though I am grieving for the loss of potential for my life and the lives of others because of global warming, I feel as though I am being cheated of and losing slowly the beauty of the world and my life because of the devestation the planet is experiencing at the hands of humans, and I feel as though there is a stopwatch counting down the years of innocence I have left before I am physically confronted by the changes our Earth is experiencing in its climate. I just feel cheated, and the more I feel this way the more I want to document and make memories to look back on fondly while I still can, and document the beauty of our world before it is a much different place.
I really enjoy experimenting with alternative modes of media and seeing what I can create. For me an alternative mode of media is anything that is considered to be outdated or old, so things like 8mm or 16mm video cameras as well as 35mm and medium format film. I feel like these are examples of very raw media. When you are using film you have finite exposures to represent whatever it is you see, and I think because of this you often see things in their truest form through these mediums. In my media artefact I would love to experiment with and use 8mm film as I really enjoy the raw and unabashed nostalgia that it evokes. I would also want to use 35mm and medium format film to portray our environment in a raw way, and to hopefully inspire in others the same excitement and wonderment that I feel when I see our environment documented through these formats.
An example of 8mm video that inspires me is a video that creator Russel Chai posted on his youtube channel. The video documents his summer in a raw and beautiful way through 8mm film. When I watch this I get the sensation that life is really less complicated than it seems, and that good times and memories are worth preserving at all costs. I would want to capture this same feeling through my work, focusing more on the world around me, in the hopes that someone may feel the same urge to preserve our environment that I felt watching this video.
I want my media artefact to be a love letter to life and the environment we live in despite the collapse and grief we face. I want to show that there is still beauty to experience in the world and that memories we have are the most important things to carry with us. I want to show that the world is worth fighting for and that we need to be strong in the face of adversity.