High-tech tools at the frontier of human knowledge have enabled a new conception of deep time extending to the origins of the universe, of life, of time. Of everything.

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This deep time origin story differs from ancient origin narratives for its foundation in modern scientific method, in shareable evidence. Its scale is almost beyond imagination: the challenging conception of 13 Billion years.

In coming to meet this deep time we cannot help but consider Earth’s indifference to our continued expansion as a species. This is the substance of Settlement, the consideration of pre and post-human environment as represented by landscape marginal to human habitation.

This concept of enablement in the context of evolution invites a fresh understanding of causality and qualifies the knowledge leap proposed by Darwin in 1859.

And as in the evolution of life, meaning is rather enabled than caused. Discovered, contested and dissolved, meaning emerges and recedes, is associative and adaptive.

An immersive experience, Settlement comprises multiple expressive centres: video, photography, sound, visual art, installation-assembly, and text suggesting landscape in a pre and post-human state. These centres are assembled to invite synthesis by the viewer in fluid and adaptive resonances which construct both the vitality and insight of the work.

Settlement remains a work in progress.

Andrew Stacey

September 2023