Earth’s Self Correcting Systems, is a work which considers human induced climate change. The series is a response to our environmental predicament and advances a notion of a sublime. We stand before nature wondering what on earth we have unleashed. This series references the vocabulary of the sublime, to visualise impacts of climate change on coastal settlements. It proposes that the most relevant contemporary sublime is the ecological sublime.

Through the use of digital technology, invoking the imagination, via a mix of field experiences and ecology research, I utilise digital technology to construct sublime environments. Specifically, the sublime that we will face in 20 years time. I examine how to provocatively ring forward the future to motivate a social response. I am not interested in documenting sublime landscapes – although it is a good starting point. I construct relevant 21C sublime of plausible photographs from actual existing landscape fragments from my growing archive. The veracity of the photographic medium is key, in that it renders the landscapes compellingly real and meaningful in the context of the discourse.

Canadian theorist, Marshal McLuhan wrote: “I think of art, at its most significant as a DEW line, a Distant Early Warning system that can always e relied on to tell the old culture what is beginning to happen to it.”

Marzena Wasikowska has worked in Canberra since 1987 and is a PHD candidate in Photography and Media Arts at ANU. Since 2010 the theme of her work are a meditation on the built environment, the most recent work, a contemplation on waterscapes and visualising climate change. She has exhibited both in Australia and overseas and a selection of this work was exhibited in Poland in three solo exhibitions in 2017 and 2017.