Climate Century

There is Nothing Accidental or Surprising About This is a long term artwork that uses tree rings to record the human activity and changes to climate as a living memento mori, a memorial, a monument to this radical and rapacious Anthropocene.

Over the course of three years the artist will consciously falsify the records of tree ring growth in young pine trees, including one Wollemi Pine, by manipulating their climatic and environmental conditions to reflect those of the Great Dying – the greatest extinction event in Earth’s history. The pine will also be symbolically exposed to spoken discourses about climate change.

Wollemi Pine is a native pine that was thought extinct until 1994 when they were discovered in a National Park in NSW. There are only one hundred pines left in natural habitats. They are living fossils. Teetering on the brink of extinction, these trees have borne witness to the changes in climate for two hundred million years.

Over the first three years of this project Emily will live with the pines in a simulacrum of the Great Dying era, whilst engaging with the climate debate. A series of works document the pines: video, image, performance and talks, are created, before the trees are permanently planted and left to record the actual climate conditions of Adelaide. As an out-of-place species in South Australia, these pines will track the passage of time by their growth rings and form part of a century/millennia long performance… or succumb to the heat.