Dancing on Mars

Dancing on Mars, 2007-21

Twelve sets of gelatin silver ‘chemogram’ films, three juxtaposed with ‘shadowgram’ films, three reiterated by starlight two of which are mounted on glass. Displayed backlit. Unique objects.

These original and remade camera-less gelatin silver ‘chemograms’ exposed by sunlight on the dry salt bed of Lake Tyrrell trace the imprints of a performer dancing across photographic film, her feet wet with sodium thiosulphate ‘fixer’, which chemically dissolved the undeveloped silver in the emulsion. Human footprints carry many meanings. Baseness. Abjection. Presence. Impact. For astrobiologists, periodically dry, pink, hypersaline Lake Tyrrell is a perfect model for what life might exist on Mars because the lake’s subsurface minerals and microbes closely resemble primordial saline habitats on earth. Except for its invertebrates, much of the above-surface life that once thrived around Lake Tyrrell has been destroyed by clearing and colonization. And, like most of the planet, the relict life-systems of Lake Tyrrell are undergoing accelerating decline from anthropogenic climate change. Dancing on Lake Tyrrell is like dancing on Mars.