Friday Tour | Danielle Celemajer

In the first of a new series of Friday Tours we are delighted to be joined by Danielle Celemajer, Author, Professor of Sociology and Criminology at the University of Sydney, Deputy Director of the Sydney Environment Institute and lead of the Multispecies Justice project. The tour will address the ethics of our encounters with different timescales, environmental events and other earth beings, starting at Katie Paterson’s To, Burn, Forest, Fire (2021). This work commemorates live wildfires – many in Australia being personally connected to Danielle – through the burning of two incense sticks, one with the scent of the first forest (385 million years ago) and one with the scent of the “last forest”, which Paterson takes to be the Amazon. With Angelica Mesiti’s artwork based on Charles Lyell’s fossilised raindrops, we will then think about the relationship between transient events and long term impact. Danielle will invite us to reflect on how the transient can become the transformative. Lastly, moving to Mikala Dwyer’s Diamonds, Danielle will lead a conversation about the differences between human consciousness, oriented to the time of our lives, and deep time, and how we might consider our responsibilities for bridging this profound gap. Throughout the tour, Danielle will read passages from her book Summertime: Reflections on a vanishing future, a book which asks us to, “look around [and] become present to all beings who are living and dying through the loss of our shared home.”