Artists: Mike Bianco & Loren Kronemyer
Work: Brackish Rising (2015-17)
Partner: City of Kwinana
Location: Kwinana, Western Australia
Brackish Rising is an ongoing multi-faceted project by artists Mike Bianco and Loren Kronemyer which engages with issues of salt, water, desalination, ecology, and water sovereignty around Kwinana. Presented as a part of the 2017 Perth International Arts Festival, the project called attention to the past, present and future of water in Southwest Australia, including the role of the Perth Seawater Desalination Plant, a facility that has provided over 20% of all potable water in the Perth metropolitan area for the past decade.
Based in Kwinana, Bianco and Kronemyer followed the path of water in the Brackish Rising Mobile Research Lab, engaging local stakeholders, Kwinana residents and Perth festival audiences in a three-week long program of workshops, public tours, interviews, and water tastings. Brackish Rising shed new light on Perth’s water systems, producing an array of visual documentation in addition to a Brackish Radio podcast, and an internet-based archive of the unseen sights and sounds that define our relationship to water in the Perth metropolitan area.
