by Georgia Preece
"Looking at nature with a mix of awe and terror as it destroys and rebuilds itself is no longer an option."
A hovering cube of silk screen lingers within a black void, illuminating the faces of viewers with a green that is so natural, it is artificial. Dense beams of light weave their way through thick air leaving traces of colour in their path. Metallic industrial noise clatters over sobering visuals and warning messages.
Small Global: an immersive video installation in Lincoln’s Drill Hall sits as part of Frequency, a four day festival bringing socially engaged digital practice to the city of Lincoln. D-Fuse’s Small Global brings into our consciousness the anthropocene sublime, embodying Timothy Morton’s philosophical concept of climate breakdown as a hyperobject.
The greatest threat to ever face humanity is presented to the viewer as a tangible and metaphysical conflict; we are consumed by its footprints, its symptoms and its causes. It is an installation which draws together technology and nature, producing an introspective and immersive viewer experience.
Three photos of the exhibit. (Credit: Georgia Preece)
The installation has three parts, and collectively formulates a narrative of ego over eco damage:
Deforestation, mapping the growth of McDonalds, and the subsequent Amazonian deforestation.
Coltan draws parallels between the mining of precious metals to be used in mobile phone production, with the loss of both human and gorilla life in the Congo.
Finally, Extreme Energy shows the intensity of energy extraction through dangerous processes such as fracking.
Small Global takes the viewer out of the safety of the sublime and casts them into the very heart of it. Taking a step back and looking at nature with a mix of awe and terror as it destroys and rebuilds itself is no longer an option. The preconceived distance is closing, and the cascading projections appropriately consume and overwhelms the viewer with the subject.
Human shadows formed from blocked projections add to the visualisation of human impact, the viewer emerging within the narrative.
For more groundbreaking environmental art, check out Issue 4 of the Radical Art Review, Farewell, Earth!
Georgia Preece is Environment Editor for the Radical Art Review