DRIVING TO THE ENDS OF THE EARTH

Both films, Driving to the Center of the Earth (2012) and Driving to the Ends of the Earth, were made using a greenscreen technique, to create the illusion of driving into dark and uncertain terrain. In the first film, I’m driving into a deep shaft within the earth. This was made at a time when Australia was undergoing a mining boom and was obsessed with mineral extraction, often with little vision of the environmental consequences or the inevitable “bust” in this cycle. This new film shows my dog and I driving through various catastrophes. Again, we are seemingly oblivious to the perils outside the windows of the car, and we drive on like the road is fixed. Driving to the Ends of the Earth continues my use of the car interior as a metaphor for human inaction in the face of various human-related disasters.

The main reason why I’m interested in that cinematic vision of the car in motion is because the city I live in, Perth, is very car-centric and its design has been based around automotive transport, so our experience of urban space is strongly shaped by moving through it inside of cars. The windows of a car operate like screens, through which we view moving images. For me there is an interesting relationship here, not least because of the cinematic history of using rear projection in film production to create the illusion of movement in car scenes.

Two of my other interests are science fiction and the limits of life on Earth. Science fictional imagination is a mode of exploring the potential of life beyond the here and now—the detritus of the future, the ecologies of other spaces, the extension of human flesh and mind. I don’t think art should be trying to offer solutions, but it can be a lens to peer through, and science fiction offers alternate means of envisioning our reality. It reminds us that the path we are on is not inevitable and there are different ways our futures can go.

in a statement to PLATFORM:VB