ZONE, 2018-2020
But not being able to locate it is a symptom of something deeper as well. It's a reminder that we turn away from the places that threaten the loss of our bearings. We forget them. We don't even remember if we ever knew them. They are profoundly other.
David Sornig, Blue Lake: Finding Dudley Flats and the West Melbourne Swamp
David Sornig, after Tarkovsky, names this area in Melbourne The Zone: a tract of land - a "blind spot" - a nexus of waterway and infrastructure, a terrain vague. Zone follows a skein of water, expanded from Sornig's study as a pretext for these images. The waterway, the creek, appears at times as nothing more than an open drain, yet it forms a potent pathway, a spine for a minor anthropology. The creek is only ever partially recorded, although always dictates the navigations (and divagations) of this study. The series does not seek to study the creek itself, but a fragmentary collection of its socio-cultural artefacts, technologies and infrastructure: the disfigurement and destruction of the natural world.
