Silent Spring Redux: A Fable For Tomorrow

archival ink jet prints, paintings and digital moving image work, 2023

Silent Spring Redux: a suite of works derived from Rachel Carson’s seminal environmental essay "A Fable for Tomorrow" from the book Silent Spring (1962). Each of ten gif-like video loops melds nine images to form slowly changing, dissolving, hauntingly dark videoscapes. Each work allows flux, both/and, stillness and movement to exist simultaneously while recalling Carson's plea-warning on the rampant use of pesticides. Over time these short sighted solutions or “-cides” (a killer of) have ultimately resulted in interruptions to biodiversity causing ecosystem disturbances, disruptions and collapse. If humans are to contend with the damage done, we need to teach empathy and symbiosis/mutualism. The video loop(s) reinforce this as they are never still, nor are they moving, but a combination of the two, much like the way we experience the melting of the polar ice caps, or climate change - slow, almost imperceptible changes over time coupled with moments of realization. As writer Elizabeth Rush states in an interview around her book The Quickening: Creation and Community at the Ends of the Earth, "We know climate change is happening all around us but our human body barometers are not particularly well tuned in this moment in our history, to perceive that change..."

See Pesticides 101 by the Pesticide Action Network for more on the harms of and alternatives to pesticides, herbicides, rodenticides and antimicrobials. To take action and learn more, visit Beyond Plastics and consider purchasing a membership or a yard sign to designate your yard a pesticide free zone!

“Silent Spring began with a “fable for tomorrow” – a true story using a composite of examples drawn from many real communities where the use of DDT had caused damage to wildlife, birds, bees, agricultural animals, domestic pets, and even humans. Carson used it as an introduction to a very scientifically complicated and already controversial subject. This “fable” made an indelible impression on readers and was used by critics to charge that Carson was a fiction writer and not a scientist… Silent Spring inspired the modern environmental movement, which began in earnest a decade later. It is recognized as the environmental text that “changed the world.” She aimed at igniting a democratic activist movement that would not only question the direction of science and technology but would also demand answers and accountability. Rachel Carson was a prophetic voice and her “witness for nature” is even more relevant and needed if our planet is to survive into a 22nd century.” - http://www.rachelcarson.org/SilentSpring