Wednesday, June 20, 2018

Solar Nap Coal Rest

Solar Nap Coal Rest | Performance at PAWA Performance Art Week Aotearoa | Brydee Rood 2017 Wellington New Zealand. 
Solar Nap Coal Rest is about energy, sustainability and climate change – encircling dialogues about personal and collective power systems, fossil fuels, the national grid and New Zealand’s current political posturing around these critical concerns. I lay in the intertidal zone of Island Bay, taking a nap before the rising tide and setting sun. I was cocooned in a gold emergency survival blanket with my head on a pillow of raw coal nuggets and a line of solar powered LEDs drawing a line up to the high tide mark. There’s strength in lying there and knowing that the ocean is coming up, feeling resilient yet fragile in a freezing Wellington onshore gale. For most of us the knowledge that the ocean is rising rests somewhere in the recesses of our minds. Uncomfortable, but far from urgent. This work asks us to consider "Can we afford to take a nap in the face of climate change?"
Feature Article Come Hell or High Water by Julian McKinnon published in Art News New Zealand Autumn Edition 2018 and Cover.
Images: Brydee Rood 2018 | Photographs by Sara Cowdell and Essi Airisniemi