Impermanence: Elemental Forces

This chapter examines how the three sets of alliances of fire, plants and people break down the perceived dominance of human agency in the Anthropocene. Humans have been a catalyst for change. We have harnessed and consumed (like fire) but we have not done it alone. Aboriginal artist Yhonnie Scarce’s Death Zephyr (2017) meditates on the impact of British nuclear testing on people and plants at Maralinga in South Australia. This disaster is situated in the environmental history of the Atomic Age—from Nagasaki and Hiroshima to Chernobyl and Fukushima—and the curious emergence of ‘Involuntary Parks’ where humans cannot tread but plants and fire have flourished with time. Artist Susan Norrie’s multi-screen video installation Undertow (2002) shows the, at times, seemingly apocalyptic global impacts of humans and fire on forests and livelihoods; nothing is left untouched. These works address elemental ways of knowing the world and take us beyond human time. It is not a horror story—there is a sense of critical hopefulness throughout these reflections on multispecies storying, world-making, living and being with the environment.