BUNDANON || 2018

At the 2017 'Water Futures' symposium led by Arts House and Tipping Point, groups of artists worked with scientists to propose hypothetical projects where art could communicate our relationship to shifting water availability and the future. Water Futures was an international, interdisciplinary event involving participants from Australia and the Asia Pacific, including artists, scientists, indigenous elders, economists, activists, politicians, diplomats and business people. One hundred extraordinary and carefully curated multidisciplinary experts gathered for three days to discuss, share information, plan and take action on creating a sustainable future for our most precious resource - water.

 As artists, we worked with renowned biologist Nordin Hasan to develop a way of bringing members of the public into closer connection with water and the poetics and science of it, while increasing a public’s knowledge of local and universal issues in an evocative social and cultural setting.  Our ‘Skinship Manifesto’ – was the result. We decided to get together as a group again at the end of 2018. In the meantime, Punctum created the Public Cooling House.

Our bid for a Bundanon Farm residency was successful and in early December we met together to consider next steps and an integrated approach to creating and infiltrating.

In our time at Bundanon we dreamed up The Pump – a resource platform and action group for propelling Transformational Change* through arts projects and integrated approaches to research addressing our Water Future.

Bundanon Farm is based on the northern bank of the Bangalee (Shoalhaven River) in the Dharrawal language lands of several First Nation peoples’ clans who make up part of the Yuin nation.

Scroll down this page to see an introductory video to the Bangalee at Bundanon Farm with Songmen, RICHARD SCOTT-MOOORE and CECIL MCLOUD, founders of Deenoch Dancers, speaking with a group of artists on a Bangalee beach about respect and country, during Siteworks 2012 - an annual gathering and celebration. 

* ” Transformational change can only emerge as processes of social learning, whereby experimentation, openness, reflection, and strong collaboration are central tenets for the emergence of new sustainable patterns of social-ecological interaction at planetary scale.“ J. David Tàbara, Jill Jäger, Diana Mangalagiu, Marco Grasso