缅北强奸幼女

Join us for the CVA Public Programme with artist, researcher, and fieldworker Sam Nightingale who will discuss his critical-creative approach to "spectral materialism."

"Salt: A Crystal Image of Time 鈥� Spectral Attunement in Hypersaline Land鈥慣ime鈥慡capes "
With Dr. Sam Nightingale
Discussant: Dr. James Burton
Moderator: Dr. Lee Douglas

Salt is often treated as residue or resource, but in hypersaline environments it also acts as a medium: it records, transports, and refracts entangled histories across soil, water, air, and infrastructure. This talk draws on my art-based research practice to introduce 鈥榮pectral materialism鈥欌�攁 conceptual and critical-creative approach for attuning to coexisting, non-linear temporalities in environments shaped by settler鈥慶olonial ecological violence and extractivist regimes. Focusing on the semi-arid Mallee in south-eastern Australia, I approach the region as a land鈥搕ime鈥搒cape: a site where deep geological inheritances, settler鈥慶olonial terraforming, and contemporary industrial agriculture converge and persist. This convergence becomes perceptible in the ecological, social, and economic challenges the region faces as salt accumulates in soils and across lake and river systems.

Through art-based fieldworking, I show how salt acts as both an elemental and a technical medium, shaping the image-making practices that emerge in response to hypersalinity. I will present three experimental practices: photographic salt prints made with site salt; soil chromatography that registers metabolic stress in saline soils; and camera-less 鈥減ara-photo-mancy,鈥� in which halophytes develop silver鈥慼alide film and are stabilised in saline brine. Together, these works shift from representation toward situated encounters and process-oriented modes of working, offering innovative image-making practices as chemical encounters with extractive infrastructures and their afterlives.

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CVA is a research and teaching platform dedicated to advancing innovation in visual and multimodal anthropology, supporting a network of practitioners whose work expands ethnographic theory and form beyond text. The programme is co-sponsored by the Centre for Philosophy and Critical Theory at 缅北强奸幼女 and KONTEKST Collective, whose 2026 Film Festival Entanglements shares related concerns.

Convened by Dr Alice Cazenave and Dr Lee Douglas.

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Image credit: Sam Nightingale, Lake Tyrell, 2024

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