EVELYN AUSTIN

DOES ALEXA DREAM OF DIGITAL SHEEP?

Does Alexa Dream of Digital Sheep? came about in questioning Arcadia and all its’ consequences. The work is intended to engage with themes of Pastoral Ideals, expansionism, and (zoonotic) illness. Many of today’s global crises exist as a result of resource and environmental exploitation; a significant portion of which ties back to unsustainable globalized livestock and agriculture systems. The Pastoral Ideal is a genre of literature, and visual art that depicts a nostalgia for an idealized simple life in utopic pastures where livestock can graze and flourish freely. This ideal, widely represented as an unobtainable paradise, fits within Western canon to romanticize expansionist ideologies and pursuit of “untouched frontiers” that can be forcefully molded to construct false harmony between humans and nature.

In the post-modern Sci-fi genre, elements of the Pastoral emerge in the context of imminent or total ecological and environmental collapse, exposing a continued faith in this as a refuge from, and purported solution to the crises these ideologies birth. My interest is in how this trope has been and can be used to explore myths of agrarian democracy and capitalist expansion; and the way that these themes relate to current ecological crises and carry over into the digital space.

The work is a combination of original video and found images. Filmed at St. Croix island in New Brunswick, the site of some of the earliest European settlements (and the first French settlement) in North America, it attempts to engage with these implications of the Pastoral Ideal, as they relate to the current moment.