← New Books Network
New Books Network
Bronwyn Bailey-Charteris, "The Hydrocene: Eco-Aesthetics in the Age of Water" (Routledge, 2024)
00:40:48
Loading summary
Transcript53 lines
- [00:01]
State Farm Advertiser
This episode is brought to you by State Farm. Listening to this podcast Smart move. Being financially savvy Smart move. Another smart move. Having State Farm help you create a competitive price when you choose to bundle home and auto bundling. Just another way to save with a personal price plan. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there. Prices are based on rating plans that vary by state. Coverage options are selected by the customer. Availability, amount of discounts and savings and eligibility vary by state.
- [00:31]
Jack Daniels Advertiser
This episode is brought to you by Jack Daniels Jack Daniels and music are made for each other. They share a rhythm in the craft of making something timeless while being a part of legendary nights. From backyard jams to sold out arenas, there's a song in every toast. Please drink responsibly. Responsibility.org Jack Daniels and old number seven are registered trademarks. Tennessee Whiskey 40% alcohol by volume. Jack Daniel Distillery, Lynchburg, Tennessee the new.
- [00:56]
Popeyes Advertiser
Popeyes and Hot Ones menu is the definition of fire flavor. We've got the sizzling Sriracha dippers. 10 out of 10. Time to take it up a notch with the smoking Rojo chicken sandwich. Mm, that's so hot, but it's so good. Now onto the daring dab Ghost Wings. Yep, there it is. I love the spice level. Attempt the Popeyes and Hot Ones menu in stores. Our hottest collaboration yet. Love that chicken from Popeyes. Limited time in participating US Restaurants.
- [01:26]
Podcast Host (Promos)
Welcome to the New Books Network.
- [01:31]
Gargi (Interviewer)
Hello everyone, this is Gargi and today I have with me Dr. Bronwyn Bailey Shorteris, who is a Swedish Australian curator, writer and researcher. Her expertise is in the field of eco aesthetics and she has a special interest in all things water. She's currently a senior researcher at UNSW as part of the ARC center of Excellence for Automated Decision Making and Society. And she's here to talk about her first monograph called the Hydro Seed Eco Aesthetics in the Age of Water, which was published by Routledish last year. Hi Brownwyn, how are you?
- [02:14]
Dr. Bronwyn Bailey Shorteris (Guest)
Oh, I'm great. Thank you. Thanks so much for having me on this wonderful podcast.
- [02:21]
Gargi (Interviewer)
As always, I like to start with this question. What made you write this book? What were some of your first questions or thoughts when you began this book project?
- [02:30]
Dr. Bronwyn Bailey Shorteris (Guest)
Beautiful. I'd love to answer that. But first I'm just going to say that I am calling you, zooming you, podcasting with you from Aboriginal land. So I'm in Australia where all land is Aboriginal land and it always was and always will be. I'm based here on Darug and Gundingara country where I have learned recently in Darug we say warami to say hello. So, yeah, this wonderful question about why I wrote the book. So I felt, you know, I feel really kind of passionate about the ability for art to bring to the fore kind of meaning in the world. So I feel like we are living in a time where we need answers, we need ways of coming together. And for me, there's this incredible kind of tide of contemporary artists especially who are working super critically with water, with the environment, with climate, and they have created a real zeitgeist internationally. I was based in the Nordic region when I was writing this, but you can see it in many other regions as well. There's this huge kind of interest in water and water knowledges and for me there's this kind of incredible passion and zeitgeist that needed to be better understood and written about. And that's why it kind of is about connecting this place of practice with the world of theory. So we have this beautiful world happening that's kind of simultaneously happening in kind of water theory. So we've got wonderful people like Astrida Neimanus, Cecilia Chen, all these incredible people who are thinking through how do we think with water? And then at the same time we've got all of these artists doing these practices where they're thinking with water and living with water and collaborating with water and altogether moving away from an extractive model of water. So for me, the book really needed to be written because it's about shifting our, you know, it's about shifting our kind of dominant narratives of our human water relations as they currently stand.
- [04:42]
Gargi (Interviewer)
I'm going to talk a little bit about the title of this book, which is the Hydrocene. Can you explain the term hydrocene? Is this your neologism? And why do you think we need this particular theory today?
- [04:56]
Dr. Bronwyn Bailey Shorteris (Guest)
Yeah, thank you. Yeah, it is, it is a neologism that I, that I've coined in this academic setting. Of course, you know, people have been talking about water and ages in lots of different ways, but yeah, in this setting, especially within my PhD, that was really my interest in kind of seeing the curatorial possibilities of naming an epoch. I was really, you know, I really enjoyed the idea that the curatorial or contemporary art could partake in the kind of science dominated language building of our times. I was quite informed by the work of T.J. deMoss, who wrote a wonderful little book called against the Anthropocene, where he really calls for arts and humanities to be part of these conversations and to insert themselves. So I feel like it's a really important kind of Disruption to the Anthropocene's very terrestrial kind of dominance and these very anthropocentric logics. And as I mentioned before, Estrida Nemanis work, especially her book Bodies of Water, was very influential to a lot of the artists that I was writing about and to myself as well. So it's been an important idea to kind of bring to the fore the idea of an age. So the age of water as this kind of conceptual, embodied epoch that's kind of leaky and circulatory and kind of, you know, it's about existing in capitalism and colonial structures, but it's also about usurping those through these planetary watery structures.
- [06:32]
Gargi (Interviewer)
And to put this theory into practice, you have described in the book, as you. What you call yourself, hydroartistic methods, which is, if you allow me to paraphrase, is that artists have developed these methods with and through water, which help us see how the hydrocene is working. And I just want to come to this question is how do you link an artistic method and the theory of hydrocene?
- [07:06]
Dr. Bronwyn Bailey Shorteris (Guest)
Yeah. So for me, the hydroartistic methods were really a kind of way of forming that constellation. So, remember, I was talking about this zeitgeist. So I was seeing these artists working in all these different way and also theorists engaging with water in all of these interesting ways. And I needed a kind of model or methodology to be able to kind of bring those together. So I was again informed by Nymanos work on hydrologics, which comes from a different kind of theoretical background to where I've taken it. But she has some beautiful sentences. I have one here, I think, where she talks about the. Or maybe I don't have it right in front of me, but she talks about this beautiful idea of kind of like the things that water knows, you know, the ways that water can teach us and the things that water already kind of understands in the world. And so I was really interested in this idea that, you know, the ways that artists are collaborating with water or engaging with water in artistic models, that these are actually forms of water itself sharing its knowledge with us. So I was really interested in the idea that the water within these different settings, within the ocean, river, swamp ice, that they weren't just water, wasn't just a kind of prop or a background, but that the water itself was actually contributing to these artworks and actually bringing its own knowledges and understandings and agency into the works. And so the hydroartistic methods try to find a way to name and frame that specifically.
- [08:50]
Gargi (Interviewer)
And I just want to Go one step more specific, which is that I noticed in each chapter you use a set of active verbs to describe these methods. For example, in the chapter on the ocean, you're talking about tidying, waving, submerging. Was these choice of verbs as very active verbs, doing verbs a deliberate choice, or did it emerge naturally out of the artistic works that you were analyzing? And this is curious because we are moving from theory, which traditionally we understand in more passive terms in the sense that there's less involvement of the body itself and more of, for example, thinking, reflecting, understanding, where you imagine I'm stationary at a place and then I am doing where you are using much more active, much more verbs that involve movement of the body itself.
- [09:50]
Dr. Bronwyn Bailey Shorteris (Guest)
Yeah, thank you. I love that question. Yeah, I think it emerges in relation also to others practice. So for example, Karen Barad, I really love this way she talks about this interlinking of theory and practice. I think it also maybe comes from my history of teaching and education. So that's been a really big part of my curatorial work and also working in universities. And I really love that idea, very dynamic idea that theory is like a long conversation that you can get involved with through across space and time. And that you don't need to feel that these theories are something up on a pedestal, but we're actually able to engage with them and live with them. And I think that for me is really important in this active terms. And then I think perhaps more importantly, the water itself really shows to me those active ways of working. People often talk about flow in relation to water. And while flow is a really interesting aspect of water, there are many other movement based things that water does that it erodes, it sustains, it transforms, it continually is in these states of movement. And so I love the idea that we could keep that kind of active space within theory. And also maybe for the artists themselves, I'm hoping that they might see themselves within that active idea of theory rather than their work. Cause their works are not static. You know, they're often performed multiple times and they adjust different ways when they're set. And you know, all the works, the artists that I talk about, they're all kind of like living artists who are making work today in a very vibrant and dynamic way. So I wouldn't want to kind of make it seem like it's a closed book kind of work either. Yeah.
- [11:39]
Gargi (Interviewer)
In this book you use a striking phrase which I found very interesting, was the lens of the natural cultural water crisis. Can you unpack this a little for us? First of all, why call it a lens and then a lens to what exactly? What am I looking at? And then I probably I will come back to this again. But just to put it out there, what the next question is, why call it natural cultural water crisis? Why not nature culture where I think the term is coming from? Nature. Sure. And if you make the distinction between these two. Sorry. Thank you.
- [12:21]
Dr. Bronwyn Bailey Shorteris (Guest)
No, I love it. I love it. It's great. Yeah. So yeah, I think what you're referring to the kind of first chapters of the book where I really try to set up an unpacking of what are the kind of water myths, what are the kind of socio belief systems that have led to the current water crisis. And I try to unpack that by understanding these pillars of the so called natural cultural water crisis. So I begin by expanding the work of Amitav Ghosh and his incredible work about the cultural climate crisis. So he's really influential to me, but to many others in his writing talking about that the climate crisis that we're in, it isn't just an ecological crisis. It's equally if not more, it's a cultural cl. And it's a crisis of the imagination. And that really rung true to me that it's not the fault of artists or the fault of writers that we're not able to deal with this, but it's the idea that we're culturally kind of limited in our understandings of what this climate crisis looks like and does. And so therefore these really ecocritical, eco aesthetic practices that I'm bringing to the fore, they're very much within this cultural climate crisis. And then I equally wanted to look at the work of Donna Haraway and her important, I mean her incredible legacy, you know, obviously inspired by a lot of her work, but especially this, you know, entwinement of nature culture. And to me the natural cultural just again brings it more to the. Just brings it more to the present. And it just shows that we're in this, we're existing in this natural cultural state, that it's again, not kind of something far away, but it's something that we are ourselves embodied and enmeshed and entwined within. So I wanted to kind of really place those pillars of this natural cultural water crisis right at the beginning of the book. And it's been a really, really interesting process because since I wrote the book I've actually been expanding that section and kind of continuing to think through what are some of the other reasons behind the water crisis. And I've been able to look at that in some of my current work around digital and the rise of generative AI and the kind of immense toll on water sources that that digital thirst is taking. So, yeah, I hope that answers your question. But to me, it's such a kind of important aspect of why we need to understand this age of water differently and why we need to come at it from an embodied perspective. And I hope that those terms kind of hope to show that enmeshment definitely.
- [15:12]
Gargi (Interviewer)
Does answer my question. And coming to the Rivers chapter, you write that the artists and curators working with rivers are not so much concerned with the flowing of the river, but how the river, and I'm quoting from the book here, reroutes, diverts, blocks, resists, reconfigures, and escapes. To me, it seems like a perfect example of your approach in the hydrocene that you. You have talked about in the beginning of this conversation, showing how nature is not separate from us, but something that is engaging with us. And it's not just we who are engaging with nature, with water. Is this what you meant, or I got it wrong?
- [15:58]
Dr. Bronwyn Bailey Shorteris (Guest)
I think you got it exactly right. And I think, yeah, if I had to tell people to choose just one chapter to read, I might suggest the river, because the river, the book is broken up into these five different water bodies. And, I mean, I love them all, but the river one is very overtly political because the artists engaging with the river are often seeing it as a zone for resistance. It's a very unsettled space. As you can imagine. Rivers kind of bring this place of, you know, as you said, diversion. It's often about damning, it's about power. It's often about first nations power in relation to water sources and rivers. So I draw on. I think it's in the introduction, but I talk about. I have a quote from an amazing Australian first nations artist and writer, Jas Money. And they say a river is always a river. And they're talking about when a river is absent or dried up or diverted or dammed, that a river is still always a river. And I really responded to that line, and I felt very kind of sure that that should come across into this understanding of what a river can do. And they have this idea of rivers as something kind of consistent. But in the work of Badger Bates, who's a Barkandji artist here, who's like a river defender, a cultural river defender, and also in the work of Gabriella Hirst, who I talk about in the book, they both really highlight that, especially in an Australian context, in this settler context, Here, you know, rivers are not consistent. A European river model has been placed on the Australian so called Australian rivers. And so naturally these rivers have a lot more flux and flow and movement. They have a lot, you know, they're such important kind of cultural sites, but within kind of European water management systems that have been inherited here, they're not allowed to kind of move in those ways. So the river, you know, it's such an interesting area. There's obviously like the rights of nature movement that's happened around rivers beginning in Colombia and then New Zealand and in other places more recently. And a lot of those struggles are led by first nations water defenders as well. So, yeah, for me, the river is a fascinating point and I think it was probably when I was in Sweden that I first understood about the Saami relationship to the river, especially within the Norwegian context of the exhibition Let the River Flow. And this was a really important exhibition about a river that was dammed and the Sami resistance to that damming. So, yeah, it's a really important work. Oh, I don't know if you can hear that, but there's a lot of rain here suddenly. I hope that's not too bad on the recording.
- [19:12]
Gargi (Interviewer)
No, it is. No. Okay. Is that what you mean by river? As a river, even if you dam it and you don't see the water and you do development, at some point it's going to come back because this is still a river. But is that what that quote is supposed to mean?
- [19:28]
Dr. Bronwyn Bailey Shorteris (Guest)
If I got it right, I. I'm not sure exactly. You know, I wouldn't want to speak for Jasmini's work, but to my reading of it, that's how I read it. I believe that you see that water, you know, that water finds a way and that it's even, even in absence, even in destruction, the water is still in the atmosphere, it's still moving through, it's still in memory, it's still embodied. So those rivers, even if their structures are changed, the space of the river still is a very poignant force. I think this is kind of clear maybe in some of the sea level rise that's happening now. So, for example, where the sea level rises are happening and communities are being inundated, those sites still exist with us. They still, they still are culturally significant places, even when water rises over them. So I think it's this idea that water is this beautiful connector and also equally a really complicated connector because it also runs along lines of toxicity, it runs along lines of inequality. So for me, the age of water, the hydrocene isn't just a kind of soft, gentle connector. It's actually showing the way that yes, when rivers are dammed, the water shows up in other places, but those rivers are dammed along colonial lines, along lines of injustice that are very familiar. So that's what makes water such a kind of important indicator and figure of our times. Because if you follow the water, you are actually able to understand many, if not all of the kind of conflicts of the world right now through those through that watery lens.
- [21:23]
Podcast Host (Promos)
Hello Finney. Did you think our story was over?
- [21:28]
Dr. Bronwyn Bailey Shorteris (Guest)
Mr. Grammar?
- [21:29]
Podcast Host (Promos)
This Friday, you're dead. Dead is just a word. Critics are saying Ethan Hawke is pure cured nightmare fuel. Discover the secret behind the mask. What do you think happens when you die? It's time to find out. Black film 2 only in theaters Friday. Rated R under 17 night admitted without.
- [21:52]
Marshalls Advertiser
Parent this episode is brought to you by Marshalls, where you never have to compromise between quality and price. The buyers of Marshalls hustle hard working to bring you great deals on brand name and designer pieces because Marshalls believes everyone deserves access to the good stuff. Visit a Marshalls store near you or shop online@marshalls.com so good, so good, so good.
- [22:18]
State Farm Advertiser
Just then, thousands of winter arrivals at your Nordstrom rack store. Save up to 70% on coats, slippers and cashmere from Kate Spade, New York, Vince, Ugg, Levi's and more.
- [22:28]
Dr. Bronwyn Bailey Shorteris (Guest)
Check out these boots. They've got the best gift.
- [22:31]
Gargi (Interviewer)
My holiday shopping hack.
- [22:32]
Nordstrom/WhatsApp Advertiser
Join the NordicLub.
- [22:34]
State Farm Advertiser
Get an extra 5% off every rack purchase with your Nordstrom credit card. Plus buy it online and pick it up in store the same day for free. Big gifts, big perks.
- [22:43]
Dr. Bronwyn Bailey Shorteris (Guest)
That's why you rack.
- [22:48]
Nordstrom/WhatsApp Advertiser
When did making plans get this complicated? It's time to streamline with WhatsApp, the secure messaging app that brings the whole group together. Use polls to settle dinner plans, send event invites and pin messages so no one forgets mom's 60th and never miss a meme or milestone. All protected with end to end encryption. It's time for WhatsApp message privately with everyone.
- [23:12]
Gargi (Interviewer)
Learn more@WhatsApp.com I'm coming from the movement of a water body to the non movement of a water body, which I personally found the most interesting was on swarms and you pointed out that many of those in Australia have been long cultivated and maintained by operational people. Yet for example, where capitalism does find use for rivers has found use for the oceans with deep sea mining and so forth. Swamps, as you point out, are even seen as useless or even threatening. And I was Wondering, as I was reading is why is it like that? Why do you. Couldn't these water bodies, which also have minerals, which also have resources, come to be seen as something threatening? And what can we learn about, for example, capitalism from this? What is, for example, for us when we are looking at Hydrocene or when we are looking to counter Anthropocene, where what is so specific about swamps? Then we can go, okay, maybe here is a counter to the world that we are trying to create.
- [24:32]
Dr. Bronwyn Bailey Shorteris (Guest)
Thank you.
- [24:33]
Gargi (Interviewer)
I don't know if it makes sense.
- [24:34]
Dr. Bronwyn Bailey Shorteris (Guest)
Yeah, totally. Yeah, I think, yeah, I'm with you with this swamp cyber at first, and I think especially living in Sweden at the time there was some. And in Europe there were some really exciting swamp projects, especially this swamp pavilion in the Venice Biennale, in the Architecture Biennale, and also this wonderful program called the Swamp Biennale that was a multi year program at an artist run space called Art Lab Gniesta in Sweden. So I was able to see firsthand the way that these swampy worlds were contributing to what you're talking about, this changing of meaning in terms of kind of swamp and modernity altogether. There's some wonderful texts about that, and I do write about it a bit in the book, but there's a really. By Egler Rinders, die Cutter. I'm sorry, I'm probably pronouncing that name absolutely incorrectly, but Egler's work is a really great analysis of kind of like, you know, the kind of desperation for modernity and for colonial capitalism to.
- [25:45]
Gargi (Interviewer)
Get.
- [25:45]
Dr. Bronwyn Bailey Shorteris (Guest)
Out of the murkiness of the swamp. So from my understanding, the problem with the swamp is that it's seen as inefficient. And I think it doesn't sit within our clear categories that we want water to exist in. So swamps often have brackish water, so a mix of sweet and salty. And I think the brackish kind of goes against our capitalized versions of water where you have a very clear hierarchy of drinking water down to kind of swimmable water, down to brackish water, down to toxic water. And so we're existing in this paradigm where swamps don't really seem to make sense within the modernist perspective of that. However, more recently, what's been great with swamps and interesting with swamps is that they now have finally started to be understood as, you know, the very important wetlands that they are and the breeding grounds for migratory birds and mangroves and swampy creatures like crabs and things, how important they are actually to the whole ecosystem and how important they are to cities and filtration systems. And all of this other stuff. So there is kind of starting to be this trend back towards kind of protecting swamps. But I think linguistically it's quite interesting because a lot of that work will be called wetlands, not swamps. Swamps kind of really sits in this kind of dark, diseased kind of place where people have been, you know, talking about the swamps as this space where there's this smells that can send you into crazy worlds and all of these kind of things. There's been a lot of, like, swamp monster kind of world building, which is quite interesting compared to the often a lot more kind of like paternalistic, kind of save the wetlands model. So, yes, swamps are super interesting.
- [27:44]
Gargi (Interviewer)
Yeah. I don't know if I can, but I remember the first time I came across. I come from the desert part of India, so we did not have water. The first time I came across was one. There was news there was a swamp in Kashmir in the north of India, and they had planted a lot of trees on it. And then they realized, okay, we have completely ruined the ecosystem by doing that. So they had to cut down the trees. And there was this huge debate if we are allowed to cut down the trees. And so there's these two sides which are saying which is more environmentally friendly to have the swamp and say, for example, the ecosystem or to cut the trees. And in fact, for example, that. I don't know how it is in Australia, but in India it's a very big thing. When you go to the forest, you really need permissions and things like that. And I was wondering. It became. Became really funny because you constantly have, well, I am the right person here, and there is an evil capitalist opposite to me. But when you come across places like these, you have, well, really, how. How do you imagine, for example, it's really questioning what kind of nature, not. Not nature as something pristine, which will always benefit us. It can have, for example, microbes that are good for the environment, but probably not good for me if I want to go swim there, for example. Right. So there's this complication and realizing that we are not the center at all of the space that we are in. A lot more things going on. So I just wanted to mention how sometimes it becomes very funny with places like swamp.
- [29:38]
Dr. Bronwyn Bailey Shorteris (Guest)
Yeah, it really, really does. And also you can really romanticize that. Like you say you think that you're somehow above all of these human anthropocentric needs, but actually when you're there, they're often quite stinky, and they can be actually quite unpleasant spaces as well. They're not designed for our terrestrial bodies. But yeah, I did work with this wonderful artist, or I still work with this wonderful artist, Signe Johanneson. And she worked with a beautiful swamp, her and curator Caroline Malmstrom with this beautiful swamp for many years that was like a small swamp that was near the art space that they ran. And they brought scientists there and artists and students and all different people. And they also trained themselves how to free dive down into the swamp. And Signe wrote this beautiful kind of love letter to the swamp where she talks about having little gills open up on her neck where she can be in the swamp. And she. And I visited that swamp a number of times. And I think that helped me to kind of open up that side of myself where I could exist a little bit in that awe and wonder while also seeing the relationship to toxicity. And with that swamp, it's also a closing swamp, so it doesn't have any new water entry points. So it's kind of dying. So it's also about how we memorialize and how we spend time with and how we kind of bring these. These interdisciplinary perspectives to life in a kind of real way in like a community focused way, which I really love with their work.
- [31:19]
Gargi (Interviewer)
Coming now to the biggest water body, which is ocean. And you write in this book, ocean is one ocean, a singular ocean. And someone who is really interested in oceanic humanities is a question that I. I think about very often. And I just wanted to ask why you see it that way. And if. And I'm going to be the devil's advocate here for a moment, where you are citing Pacific authors and thinkers who are conceptualizing Oceania, which, by. By which they mean mostly the southern Pacific Ocean, as I understand it. And, and the connections of these islands, which do not always have a lot of landmass as being interconnected, where the people of one Pacific country do have links to the other and they should have the right of movement. And not just the US and Russian and Chinese naval bodies, but this is very different. For example, when we look at the other oceans, for example, the Atlantic, which has its own particular colonial history, or the Indian Ocean, which has a very interesting pre colonial history and so forth. And these are. And these, for example, these oceans are shaped by geography, right? What kinds of moments are available? For example, monsoon did allow travel in Indian Ocean, which was not possible, for example, in the Atlantic. There's also about question about technology, when was what available? And then there is the question, of course, of politics. Unfortunately, these are highly militarized zones. Also they have a Lot of nuclear waste in the Pacific. So can we really think of ocean in singular terms? And I realized that in the book the focus is between Australia and Nordic countries. But I also just wanted to play this by you if you thought of this broader question about ocean.
- [33:21]
Dr. Bronwyn Bailey Shorteris (Guest)
Yeah, it's a beautiful question. Thank you. Thank you for bringing it to the fore.
- [33:25]
Gargi (Interviewer)
Yeah.
- [33:26]
Dr. Bronwyn Bailey Shorteris (Guest)
So, as I say in the book, I'm really inspired by, and I wanted to highlight these Oceanian voices and practitioners and theorists. So what you were kind of describing there about, especially from the Oceanian perspective, is especially from the work of Epoli Haofer and his influential work Our Sea of Islands, and also in a more contemporary manner as well, the work of curator, academic and art artist Laouli Ashraagi, whose work I find really inspiring as well, amongst many other wonderful practitioners in this field. But what I was really drawing from, and especially a show that Ashraagi curated that was called one salt water, which was back in 2020. So what I was really drawing from that was a kind of conceptual prompt and a kind of conceptual play on can we. Can we expand our thinking to consider the ocean as one ocean with all of those intricacies that you're talking about, all of those absolute specificities with that place based meaning? As you said, there's so much there in each of those sites and each of those oceans in their own respect. But in the way that I kind of framed it in the book, I wanted to pay homage to those Pacifica authors and thinkers. And then I also wanted to kind of expand it into kind of environmental humanities thinking. So, you know, the work of Hester Bloom or Rachel Carson, who have this very expansive way of thinking of the kind of oceanic. And so I wanted to really offer it as like a conceptual prompt. So I think, you know, the idea that we could somehow connect with this planetary water is really important to me. But how we actually envision that and act that out and how that exists is completely place based and context based and absolutely would relishes in difference. I think Estrada name talks about water and difference as well. And I think it's a really important point that we can all be kind of in the same water, but we're not all experiencing the same thing. So, yeah, I wouldn't want it to come across that we're all in one ocean and therefore all need to have the one reality. But I do think it's an interesting kind of conceptual prompt. If we could be existing in the age of water, could we also be existing in one ocean?
- [35:59]
Gargi (Interviewer)
So what you're trying to say is that despite where we come from and who we are, we do have access to all of the ocean and not just for example, the militaries and the big companies that are now populating. Is that what you are?
- [36:20]
Dr. Bronwyn Bailey Shorteris (Guest)
Yeah, I think so. And I think also, you know, the ideas of borders and boundaries from a colonial perspective are often about ownership. And you know, I think what the water here is for me, I think is what is trying to come through is that the water evades these boundaries anyway. So like the actual water that exists in these sites, you know, sometimes it's water, sometimes it's a puddle, sometimes it's in a crocodile, sometimes it's in a cloud. So that water is not interested in whether it's from my opinion that water is constantly in movement and it's not kind of reliant on being one ocean at one time. So I'm interested in this idea that we could have a sense of fluidity between all of these and that these planetary spaces bases that many people have access to, not all, but many people have access to is actually a kind of portal into a planetary understanding without limiting super important local and often first nations led engagement and cosmologies with water. I would never want to flatten those kind of cultural understandings of water. But conceptually I think it's really interesting to consider that we are actually participating in this planetary hydro, social hydrocycle, hydro socialist movement. You know, when it's never just a simple glass of water or a simple visit to the beach, it's part of this planetary circulation and very ancient and future focused circulation.
- [37:58]
Gargi (Interviewer)
I think what we're coming to conclude is it's about thinking beyond ownership and that this is we are the center or we can own something like that. I think that that's a theme that runs across all of the chapters, if I'm not wrong.
- [38:13]
Dr. Bronwyn Bailey Shorteris (Guest)
Yeah, I think so. Yeah, I think that's what the water and the artists teach us.
- [38:20]
Gargi (Interviewer)
Before we wrap up, could you tell us what you are working on right now and what can we look forward to read from you in the future?
- [38:29]
Dr. Bronwyn Bailey Shorteris (Guest)
Yeah, absolutely. So yeah, I'm still spending plenty of time thinking about the hydrocene, which is wonderful and as I said, I'm expanding those pillars as well and I'm thinking through. So I'm in this research position with Professor Deborah Lupton and that's been really wonderful. We're working on a project called Digitizing and Datafying the four Elements. So we're specifically looking at kind of ecosystems like soil health and bushfires and things like water systems and how they are digitized and dartified using emerging technologies such as generative AI and things like this. So for me, it's this kind of space of trying to understand and bring to the fore how artists are engaging with these spaces and how they're kind of like the digital ecologies that they're building and contributing to. It's also like a very interesting time to be looking at AI because it's starting to kind of creep into everybody's day to day life or many, many people's day to day life. So there's this kind of huge explosion of the digital. And we have a moment to really consider the role of freshwater sources and data centers and our kind of relationship also to nuclear, the relationship that we're kind of building our kind of digital footprints that we're building collectively. So I think it's a very. It's a scary time to be looking at it, but it's also a really fascinating time. And I'm really enjoying working on this work right now with the center of Excellence. But yeah, I'm also hoping to kind of continue to write about the hydrocene as well. And just, you know, there's so many artists to talk to and so much work to do. So, yeah, I'm really enjoying this bridging of practice and theory and hoping to kind of continue to expand beyond the Nordic, Oceanic, Oceanian kind of perspectives as well, because there's so many other water stories that I also need to better understand.
- [40:35]
Gargi (Interviewer)
It sounds fascinating. I hope to read your next book whenever that is. Thank you, Bronvin, so much for taking the time out and talking to me. I hope you have a great evening ahead and a beautiful summer in Australia.
- [40:52]
Dr. Bronwyn Bailey Shorteris (Guest)
Thank you so much. Yeah, we can only hope that it won't be too hot, but thank you very, very much. It's been such a joy to talk about this work. Oh, and yeah, just to say, the book is open access, so if anyone would find it interesting, feel free to go and download it.
- [41:06]
Gargi (Interviewer)
Thank you.
- [41:08]
Dr. Bronwyn Bailey Shorteris (Guest)
Thank you.