Below is a brief list of books that came to mind when thinking about Altered Terrain. They’re all quite different interpretations; speaking on themes of human impact on the environment, the digital vs physical world, human connection & our relationship to the spaces we inhabit. I hope you enjoy it.

“the shape of the individual mind is affected by land as it is by genes”

Barry Lopez ‘Crossing Open Ground’, 1988

Changing landscapes, the shifting role of nature, a disrupted harmony between the land, animals, and humans. ‘Surrender’ by Joanna Pocock is a beautifully vulnerable memoir/nature reportage on the environmental movements of the American West; hunters, rewilders, ecosexuals, communities that are (re)connecting with the earth in an effort to restore the balance fractured by climatic disruption.

In a time of a personal crisis, Pocock travels to Montana in search of a place to belong. During her 2 year stay, she meets various groups living in close connection with the land, even as it is actively disappearing under their feet. Pocock forges close relationships with some of these communities and embarks on a journey of change; a change as much within herself as in the landscapes she inhabits during her time in the West. 

With the devastation of climate catastrophe and ecological disasters ever present, the symbolic wilderness that many of us long for is rapidly fading. What happens to a place once it disappears? Can it ever be restored? And what happens to the communities whose interior landscapes were shaped by the wild nature they were once part of, when that environment is irreversibly changed? 

How can we find a place to belong when seemingly everything is being destroyed around us?

‘Surrender’ doesn’t so much offer a solution, as it opens a narrative of hope and agency; that it is possible for us all to make space for a relationship with nature, no matter how big or small. That sometimes we can and should surrender to our inner wildness.

In a dramatic pivot, let’s enter the limitless virtual landscape of the digital world!

The portal calls out. Vast and inviting. Whispers of conversation echo and buzz, multiplying, amplifying. Information flows in an endless stream. Waves and waves of data, all within reach. A dizzying array of sound and image. You can hear, see, be anyone, anywhere, anytime. The possibilities are endless. Dive into the wormhole.

Patricia Lockwood’s ‘No One Is Talking About This’ is a book in two parts. It is at once an ode to life as the ‘perpetually online’, the rush of cyberspace, the infinite scroll. While it is also the story of awakening, the painful and beautiful parts of being human and being irrevocably connected to each other. It is a story of love and loss.

The woman at the centre lives in the portal [the internet]. She consumes it as much as she is consumed by it. The virtual space she occupies here is thrilling and overwhelming, looming with anxieties and existential dread, memes and irony. She exists here, where she is heard and appreciated. She steps out of the portal to travel the world, speaking on the portal, this new system of communication & deluge of information; an abyss both beautiful and horrific.

With the birth of her sister’s daughter, real life abruptly collides with her virtual existence and she is yanked out of the portal. The arrival of this little life, born with a life-threatening condition, changes everything. The absurdity of the online world is disrupted by the sudden shock of grief, the fragility of human life, and through it all; love. There is empathy in the world, laughter in pain and there is connection outside of the portal.

“what a time to be quote unquote alive”

When you visit a place, what do you take with you once you leave..and what do you leave behind? Taking a photo of a local woman hanging out the washing on her balcony, sketching a group of kids playing on the beach, what is it that you’re capturing? Is it simply an image to look back on or a representation of a person that will live on beyond the page? Who controls the narrative of these images and where does the line between appreciation and exploitation lie?

In ‘The Colony’ by Audrey Magee, English artist Mr Loyd arrives on a remote Irish island where he will be staying for the summer. He wants to paint the cliffs; raw and wild, shaped by a violent ocean and roaring winds. He wants to uncover the beauty within, capture it and take it back to London to revive his fading career. He unwittingly takes on an apprentice and a muse; James, one of the last young boys of the village, and his widowed mother Mairead. James and Mairead are struggling against the heavy weight of grief, searching for a purpose outside of the expectations of tradition.

Unbeknownst to Mr Loyd, another visitor is due to arrive on the island. Mr Masson, or JP, is a French linguist returning to continue his studies on the changing shape of the inhabitants’ speech, rallying to save the native language which has been gradually moulded by colonisation. He hopes this will earn him academic fame and bring herds of reporters and scholars to the island.

As friction sparks between the two outsiders, and each of them tries to capture their own view of this place, the people of the island are revealed to us. Their lives, rich and deep history, routines, struggles and fears slowly unfold. Versions of them are recorded in each man’s work, but both are too preoccupied with their own narratives and ambitions to see through to the core of their subjects. Once summer ends, they will both leave having taken pieces of the people with them, leaving bits of themselves behind on this small village on the rock.

Coming to the end of this short piece, I realise that it is full of unanswered questions. Questions of belonging, history, impact. Maybe just like the people in these books, I am also searching for the things that they are trying to find; connection, purpose, a direction. Maybe you are too. I hope you find your answers.

about Zsofi Abel

This text was written for Additional, the screen service e-newsletter, August 2023.

Images: Nina Fern, Daughter of Danu’, experimental short film, Digital HD, 1:01, Install image at Rossnowlagh beach, Donegal, Altered Terrain, 2023.

Background image from terrARium // AR square by Neonatus.exe, 2023.

Photo of the three recommended books, by Zsofi Abel.

Courtesy of the artists.