There; Not There | Karen Cronje

'There; Not There' explores the notions of presence and absence within a dystopian landscape, against a backdrop of natural reversion.

In 1986, the RMBK-1000 reactor number 4 at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant released radioactive fallout over a large tract of land after a catastrophic nuclear event; an exclusion zone was hastily established in an attempt to contain the risk of contamination. Twenty-five years later, yet another exclusion zone was created at the site of the Fukushima Daiichi accident. In both cases, natural reversion obliterated human trace within a short space of time.

Technological advances have made human interactions with the natural world fraught with strange absurdities – contained, sanitised, neatly delineated pockets of experience exist at the mercy of various natural elements and rampant growth. Incremental processes of reversion – decay, rot erosion - dismantles this simple order and returns it to the unknown, to darkness and memory; leaving behind an impression of something that used to be there.