The Substation/​ Artist/​Emily Parsons-Lord/

Practicing on the lands of the Boon Wurrung and Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung peoples of the Eastern Kulin Nation, Emily Parsons-Lord’s practice is concerned with air and explosions: materials of the climate crisis that speak to both the invisibility and the spectacle of collapse. Air is simultaneously local and global, encompassing the effects of breathing as well as the governance of polluters and policy makers. Air is where what we jettison into seeming oblivion is caught and returned. If we shift our experience of time from the human lifespan to the cosmic, or the geological, the rapidity of planetary change to the climate since the industrial revolution is profound, hot and vibrating with energy. It is clear that we are exploding.

Through air and explosions, Parsons-Lord’s work investigates the experience of witnessing this expanded unstable moment of multiple simultaneous catastrophes and the visceral experience of freefall.