Observations from the Critical Zone

Anne Noble

Two Rooms
16 Putiki Street, Newton, Auckland

01 - 30 November 2019

Preview Thursday 31 October 6 - 8 pm

The exhibition title, Observations from the Critical Zone, riffs off the name of a science initiative that focusses on ‘The Critical Zone’ which is a descriptor for that living, breathing near surface layer of the earth that is experiencing catastrophic (and invisible) loss of biodiversity. Part lover of science, part interrogator of science, the artist began this project with the question. Do trees talk? Noble imagines that a forest might be like a colony of bees operating with some kind of complex interconnected consciousness. A hive mind in the bush engaged in an eons long conversation that far surpasses the human understanding of the nature and complexity of language. With quasi scientific seriousness, she employs a method to measure the tenor of the conversations between trees, burying film in this precious zone of the earth – The Critical Zone – a medium receptive to the passage of time and chemistical signatures – in the ground between two trees.