Humus

Landscape always has a compelling presence in southern lands. The big skies, the endless land, the extreme climates…life and landscape are interchangeably connected. And yet industrial legacies have left deep scars, even in our big landscapes. In this project, we offer snapshots on the elemental nature of landscape, and the communities that live, love and work to renourish the intrinsic values of landscape. Humus, the life of the earth, has been respected and nurtured for millennia by Indigenous nations. Not so the last few hundred years. Contaminated post-industrial and mining sites proliferate across Australia. As human settlements encroach upon and eventually usurp these lands, the ground is literally poison. This film explores two brownfield landscapes where phytoremediation gardens remove contaminants from the soil.  It celebrates and captures intertwining human and ecological regimes of care in vacant and neglected landscapes.  The film encapsulates ephemeral and temporal processes of repair and reconnection through performative, playful and educative means.