Fireline Series; Everything you know could flare up and be gone.
Year: 2023-24
Video/simulation
Length: 1:37
The Fireline series depicts the trenches cut by wildland firefighters to slow forest fires as its main subject. In the summer of 2021, the Harris Mountain Fire threatened to burn the Parsons family homestead, the family ranch, and what was left of my childhood home. That year, the skies refused to rain for months on end, the trees had turned dormant early, and the firefighters warned us that there would be no stopping the fire until the first snow of the year–likely in October. Meanwhile, the wind blew the flames right to us. I imagined it tearing through the landscape, leaving it alien and unrecognizable and it broke my heart into a million pieces.
Built in Unreal Engine, these pieces explore perspectival shifts–looking at the firelines themselves from various vantage points. They ask us to contemplate an immediate ecological crisis while attempting to keep the viewer suspended in a moment of dreadful, quiet terror.
1. Fireline with Yarrow; Everything you know could flare up and be gone.
2. Fireline with Fleabane; Everything you know could flare up and be gone.