Endless Sunbeams in Another Time is a multimedia artwork by Julia Flanagan and Miguel Felipe Valenzuela that explores the evolving relationships between humans, nature, and industrialisation over time. The work examines the transformation of the Lake Macquarie Region from an ecologically balanced environment to a mechanised urban landscape.
The immersive artwork is a speculative work that uses drawing, painting, animation and interactive sculpture to examine the relationship between humans, geography, machines and the built environment. Made on location in the Awabakal, Lake Macquarie region, the interactive multichannel work explores how these complex relationships morph, change and transform from real and concrete things to imaginary machine-like structures. Through abstraction and experimentation, the work attempts to fuse these multiple temporalities into a continuous representation and reconceptualisation of time.
During their two-week residency at the Lake House, the artists spent time observing the urban and natural landscape, looking for remnants and traces of the past. Evidence of the area’s once industrial life became a strong influence behind the original pencil studies made by Flanagan, as well as drawings responding to new knowledge researched on Munibung Hill, once home to a great source of Yellow Ochre, an important material for first nations people. Marine and bird life were the main source of inspiration for Valenzuela’s research, documenting multiple site visits with drawings, as well as video and audio recordings of Jellyfish, Pelicans and Corellas.
In synthesising their research, the artists developed a series of animations through discussions and contemplation on how regions have been transformed from ecologically balanced and maintained environments to the busy mechanised industrial and post-industrial urban landscapes of the present. It is this sense of change over time that the artists sought to investigate through the work, referencing the precarious threat of over-mechanisation of the environment, the need for a revitalisation of custodianship, restoration and remediation.