Peripeteia

Peripeteia is a literary device used by Aristotle and subsequent writers to create a twist in the telling of narratives. It is the reversal of one state of affairs to its complete and abject opposite. The narratives of western colonialist traditions posit the fiction of nature as “empty spaces” to conquer; the twist (the peripeteia) in this fictive tradition is climate change and the alteration and inevitable destruction of this “nature” with which we as a species are codependent. We ultimately destroy ourselves.

This work, Peripeteia, explores the parallels between the damage on my own body from a recently diagnosed auto-immune disease and the damage we as a species are inflicting on the ecology of our forest environments (both locally and globally). The discourse of health/medicine and the discourse of climate in/action, appear to resemble one another. The patriarchal paradigms around ownership, knowledge and self are similar. With each of these paradigms I struggle for my voice, identity, knowledge and action. And this work is all about this struggle.

Self portrait 01