Wild Hope: Conversations for a Planetary Commons

Wild Hope takes many varied forms including film screenings, readings, workshops, meal sharing, talks, listening sessions and performance lectures including a screening of THE GIANTS followed by a conversation with the filmmakers Rachael Antony, Laurence Billiet and eco-activist Bob Brown.

The Wild Hope exhibition and public program invites audiences to embrace a radical shift towards ‘planetary thinking’, a move vital to the survival of human and non-human life on Earth. The theme – Carbon/Trees/Soil – was curatorially grounded in the vital role of dirt thinking and governance, grassroots practices, and the necessity of deep green politics. Life on Earth depends on soil – from microorganisms to plants and animals. Works exhibited here demonstrated soil as a substance that can awaken our sensorium via sound, smell, touch and sight (Clare McCracken, Rebecca Najdowksi, Polly Stanton); contemplate the role of ancient forests as elders and ancestors (Alex Le Guillou); use clay, water and ochre as materials of Aboriginal healing and connection with the natural world (Dean Cross); work with native trees as infrastructure, habitat, refuge and home (Mark Jacques, Openwork & Sarah Lynn Rees, RMIT ICON Science and the City of Melbourne); and express eco-anxiety and collective grief for lost trees. Expanding on an earlier body of work, researchers Marnie Badham and Tammy Wong Hulbert, with Ai Yamamoto and George Akl presented 'To the Fallen Trees'. Installed as a photographic, sound and written archive, this work was drawn from a performative event that responded to violent windstorms that created devastation across the state of Victoria in 2021, destroying hundreds of mature trees. Large numbers of fallen mountain ash (Eucalyptus regnans) were initially left to decay where they fell until the site was cleared by burning the remnants. The initial site-specific performance took place in the company of the fallen trees as local people read poems to the fallen trees, expressing grief and sense of loss. The public event and the recordings of the shared ritual have created a communal memory and evidence of care and connection to place and to the unique long-lived members of the non-human world that link us to place and time. The work is both poetic and an explicit call-to-action in response to the increased occurrence of extreme weather events due to climate change.