rocky futures

Artist Performance Karst: A Landscape of Mineral and Water

Centre for Mobilities Research, Lancaster University, Cremore, UK and T2M, Seoul, Korea, 2023

This video was created for and presented as part of Veselka’s artist performance during Rocky Futures, a collaboration between the Rocky Climates collective and the Centre for Mobilities Research at Lancaster University (Cemore).

“More substantive, machine-driven mobilities are part of the immense operations to extract lithic matter that were supercharged during the industrial revolution. Such extractions are now recognised as fundamental to the climate crisis that we confront. Holly Veselka deploys virtual mapping, 3-D modeling and simulated aerial photography to explore how the spectacular Karst limestone landscape at San Marcos, Texas, is being devastated by extensive mining for lime for concrete production, erasing its distinctive features and effacing the rich myths that focus upon this poetic and mysterious permeable realm, with its underworlds and channels. Veselka seeks to reintroduce a sense of mystery through the glitches and absences generated through photogrammetry.” — Tim Edensor, Moving Rocks, Rocks on the Move, 2024

Rocky Climates is an artists’ network formed by Rebecca Birch, Sarah Casey, and Jen Southern that brings together artists and researchers who are concerned with mobilities and instabilities (temporal, spatial, cultural, environmental) of rocky landscapes in uncertain times.

Rocky Futures presented the work of 14 artists in a series of 9 live Zoom events at the 2023 Global Humanities Conference (GMHC) and the Annual Conference of the International Association of The History of Transport, Traffic and Mobility (T2M) in Seoul, Korea on October 26th and 27th, 2023.

Still from Quarries: San Antonio to Austin, 2023, 6:52, HD video, courtesy Google Earth Studio and the artist

Still from Swallow Hole, 2023, 3:00, HD video created though photogrammetry, courtesy of the artist