Disturbed

DISTURBED is a project by Kandos School of Cultural Adaptation (KSCA). Hosted at Paul’s Paddock in central Kandos for the duration of Cementa 2024, DISTURBED examines our relationship with plants, the landscape, with Country, and with each other. Who and what came before? What is happening now? And what will happen next?

KSCA is a collective experimenting with adaptive cultural change. We support creative work beyond the familiar contexts of art to investigate new ways of acting in the world. KSCA is mindful that we walk on Aboriginal Country everywhere we go. We thank and honour the custodians of this place.

Disturbed is part of our ongoing exploration of the theme ‘succession’ within the realms of ecological science, Indigenous cultural knowledge and community resilience. It provides us with rich and compelling concepts to expand and challenge our practice around ideas of cultural adaptation. 

A ‘disturbance’ is a natural event or human activity that disrupts and changes an ecosystem, from fire and drought to farming and mining. ‘Succession’ describes what comes next as plant communities and ecosystems respond and change over time. Different disturbances lead to different types of change. When plants are razed to bare ground, fast growing 'weedy' ground covers called 'pioneer' species colonise the barren earth. Next come the longer-living perennial vegetation like grasses and forbs, then come the shrubs and finally the trees. Other disturbances like fire can remove some vegetation but pave the way for other plants to thrive. The mechanisms of plant succession have been described with terms such as facilitation, tolerance and inhibition. Traits, relationships and being in the right place at the right time all form part of the patterns of change. 

Humans and landscapes are so deeply connected through disturbance. We are interwoven with nature, in fact we often forget that we ARE nature, where our footsteps have created so many different pathways of change. 

Australia’s First Nations people have developed calendars and songlines of knowledge for tens of thousands of years, documenting, observing and interacting with changes and patterns in their landscapes. Their dance with the land is mutually beneficial, where cultural 'disturbance' practices such as cool burning provide food, fibre and ceremony whilst regenerating the vegetation for generations to come.

And here we stand in the Anthropocene, the geological period defined by the extent of human impact on the earth. The ‘colonial’ dances of disturbance like mining, urbanisation and agriculture continue to transform our landscapes and have led to widespread degradation, so massive and unpredictable are those patterns of change. Western science has developed many theories to understand disturbance and ecological succession in an attempt to read and restore landscapes. This ecological literacy is important in the practice of land management such as regenerative agriculture and permaculture, where reducing and adapting types of disturbance on farmland can create more diverse and functional ecosystems. And some of the most interesting work in regenerative ecology is happening at the intersection of western science and First Nations knowledge in Indigenous Protected Areas.  

Thinking about disturbance and succession challenges our relationship to time and invites us to reconsider our journey as a species on the planetary timeline with intergenerational reciprocity. If we take time to stop and to observe changes on our roadsides, in our paddocks and in our backyards, we might begin to build this ecological literacy piece by piece.

Succession also provides us with a framework to understand ‘who’ comes next, to examine how we function as communities, how we create legacy and hand down knowledge. 

Join KSCA as we gather, ramble and contemplate in a vacant paddock in Kandos. What will be the ecological and social outcomes of our time spent on this land? Through a series of interactive works and performances we will collectively examine our relationships with the plants, the landscape and each other. Who and what came before? What is happening now? And what will happen next?

by Imogen Semmler

The Projects

What have we here?

SILK WATER

Laura Fisher

Installation & Workshop / Sat & Sun, 10:20-11am

Moment by moment, water takes a tiny piece of land - a stone, a leaf, a seed - and moves it further downhill. This little event recurs across time and space, alongside all the other events that occur as water nurtures the life that grows here.

This means the landforms that surround us are, in a sense, water’s objects. These objects are never still. Countless patterns with many trajectories keep them in a state of continuous motion.

We aren’t really equipped to witness this form of motion. It takes a huge imaginative effort to sense the scale and time horizons of these cascading patterns.

This work is an attempt to create a momentary water object we can see and feel.

Silk Water was in part created with community members during Creek Feast, April 2024, an event celebrating the biodiversity of the region staged by Watershed Landcare at Lawson Creek, Lue (video here!). These silks were then included in an exhibition called 'Patterns and Connections' at Kandos Projects in June-July 2024, curated by Maddison O’Brien & Cheryl Nielsen. This was a collaborative exhibition by Watershed Landcare, Rylstone District Environment Society, Bingman Landcare and Kandos School of Cultural Adaptation.

SONGLINE DANCE AT DISTURBED

Peter Swain

Performance / Sat, 1:30-2:30pm

Come for a walk on the land as we interweave patterns of disturbance and succession into our common paths, journeys and stories. Learn about how firestick farming uses fire disturbance as a form of landscape regeneration.

A WILD SNACK ALONG THE WAY

Diego Bonetto

Self-guided tour

Take a walk in the field and discover the edible and/or medicinal plants that grow in it. Learn about the role weeds play in repairing and building soil from disturbance to climax species. Find out how they have been used for food, craft and natural remedies. Discover ways to safely harvest from the disrupted wild and enrich your diet with vitamins and minerals.

This work is presented in collaboration with Tarwyn Park Training.

DISCOMPOSURE COMPOSTER

Erika Watson

Interactive installation

Capitalism’s cacophony can be terrifying— more, more, MORE! Constant pressures to accumulate private possessions, land, wealth and power can leave us feeling disturbed. So too the pressure to grow, grow, GROW! It leaves little room to decompress and transform into something new.

We invite you to look inside yourself and find your inner discomposure, to name what’s agitating and disturbing you, and what you want to let go of. Write it down on a piece of black paper and place it into the Discomposure Composter. Close the lid afterwards and agitate as you would pieces of food, leaves and cardboard, to compost and transform into something new. Be brave and give over your disturbance to the dark, to rot and decay. This breakdown and renewal is a cause for delight amongst the discomposure.

LAYING THE GROUNDWORK

Leanne Thompson

Interactive installation

Plants continue to redesign this site. Through their actions, residues, and nutrients, plants feed all life here to grow, adapt, and become something new.

We invite you to reflect on this process, on how this landscape has been prepared for us, and what we leave behind. Take a seat at the desk, help yourself to materials in the drawers and write a love letter to the plants.

The inks were created from pigments of plants and earth sourced from this site, each colour ink reflecting the biological gifts the plants share with the site. See what happens if you let the inks meld and seep together on the paper, let it dry, and place your love letter somewhere in the field of disturbance.

GRAZING BLANKETS

Collaboratively conceived by KSCA, blankets created by Erika Watson and family

Interactive installation

As animals graze they disturb the landscape. Through the act of feeding off grassland they wield the power to either degrade or regenerate the landscape. When grazing is monitored, with animals rotating through small paddocks in accordance with plant growth cycles, the landscape is provided much needed rest and recovery.

We invite you to sit or lay down on the blankets with your shoes off, to enjoy your own rest and recovery amidst the busy festival. Become a grazer - cut the grass in the middle of the blankets and place the clippings in the buckets provided to be composted. While doing this, reflect on the act of grazing— How much will you cut? What will you leave? What will the result of your disturbance be?

We also invite you to reflect on the cyclical nature of these blankets. They were once grass, grazed by sheep and turned into wool. We now return them to the landscape for the next grazer— you.

DISTURBOTEQUE

Imogen Semmler

Dance party

Thu, 12 - 12:30pm, 1:30 - 2pm, 3 - 3:30pm

Fri, 10:30 - 11am, 12:30 - 1pm, 2 - 2:30pm

Sat, 10 - 10:30am, 12 - 12:30pm, 2:30 - 3pm

Sun, 11 - 11:30am

Welcome to Disturboteque, I'm your hostess Mother Earth. Come and dance on my landscape which is constantly being disturbed by flood, farming, fire and drought. These natural events and human impacts create changing conditions on the dance floor. Rules of entry are strict! Security is tight! Are you wearing what it takes to thrive, survive and jive?

DISTURBED T-SHIRTS

Collaboratively conceived by KSCA, design by Kim Williams, printed by Lucas Ihlein and Eloise Lindeback

Limited edition hand-screenprinted T-shirts

See if you can spot these ultra-rare wearable artworks around the festival!