un/predictable environments
A space for conversation, analysis, and inquiry following the Un/Predictable Environments Conference, May 20-21, 2021
Looking at a Wildfire (Adirondack Chairs), Kaleden, British Columbia, 2020 Since 2016 I have resided in one of the most fire-prone landscapes in Canada. The Okanagan Valley is an arid basin, east of the Coast Mountains of British Columbia, and west of the iconic Rocky Mountains. As an artist using photography and other associated media, I was intrigued by the question of what the aftermath of a wildfire looked like, and began making pictures of landscapes affected by wildfire. Through this ongoing project, I have learned a great deal about the composition of forests and the necessity of fire on the land. Many forests in the Central Interior of British Columbia are fire-adapted; they are designed to burn. Fires of low or moderate intensity would occur on a natural cycle every two to forty years, clearing the understory and regenerating berries and natural grasses. What settlers regarded upon their arrival in the 19th century as untrammeled wilderness was actually a forest that had been managed by the Syilx (ancestral Indigenous peoples of the Okanagan) for millennia. The Syilx had maintained a balance between ecological processes and human influence through cultural burning. In North America today, the traditional ecological knowledge associated with cultural burning has been adopted by provincial, state and federal agencies in the form of prescribed burns. In other words, a recognition of the importance of returning fire to the forest. While this scenario may be considered as regionally specific, there are fire-adapted landscapes on every continent (except Antarctica) accompanied by rich histories of cultural burning in order to renew the forest. For Un/Predictable Environments: Politics, Ecology, Agency, I presented a paper that positioned my photographs within the context of how wildfires are vilified in popular media. My artistic approach to this subject seeks to reveal diverse perspectives, and act as a critical foil to dominant media representations of wildfire. My goal is to create space for the consideration of practices of resiliency, including the reintegration of fire within fire-adapted ecosystems. (click read more to continue) Spences Bridge Fire, British Columbia, 2018 Mount Christie Wildfire, Penticton, British Columbia, 2020 Kettle River Recreation Area (fire occurred in 2015, photographed in 2018) Crandell Mountain Campground, Waterton Lakes National Park (fire occurred in 2017, photographed in 2018)
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