Adaptation

A SymbioticA Project at Lake Clifton, Western Australia

With climate change hinting at catastrophic results for some life forms (while others may benefit) it is the capability to adapt which is an advantage for the future. In a broad scoping of issues surrounding life, colonization, and decline a series of events involving people from all walks of life will engage with an environment which offers multiple areas for exploration into our environment. Lake Clifton’s hotbed of diversity offers a microcosmic peek into the issues and threats that the world faces. The Lake, with its prehistoric rocks, brackish water, introduced species (bacteria, animal and human) and developmental pressures - presents a metaphor for the global ecosystem and the Earth’s slow choking. ‘Adaptation’ explores the unique blend of organisms working together to create a cohesive community, that is ruptured by the chaos and disfunction of environmental threats we now face.

Lake Clifton, south of Mandurah, is one of WA’s best kept evolutionary secrets. Home to the largest lake-bound thrombolite reef in the southern hemisphere, thrombolites, or ‘living rocks’, are built by micro-organisms, similar to the earliest recorded forms of life on the Earth. A vital feeding and nesting site for endangered migratory birds, including the almost extinct Hooded Plover, and thickets of at-risk Tuart trees, the lake is also home to the falsely identified new species of black bream. Thrown into the lake by locals with the dream of fishing by the banks, the bream physically adapted to their new environment, becoming hermaphrodites, and breeding so rapidly that they have now themselves become a pest. Seemingly minor actions such as this, to major changes such as booms in development and global warming’s affect on rainfall, deeply effect this rich ecosystem, paradoxically putting in danger the very organisms responsible for life itself, those living on the thrombolites.

Surrounded by a rich human ecology, the lake and the thrombolites are culturally important to the Binjareb peoples’ creation story, to Western Australia’s settlement history, and this varied web is now reflected in the multitude of different organisations working together to protect Lake Clifton’s significant niche.

The uniqueness of the reef, the surrounding area and its fragile existence presents an exceptional opportunity for artists and researchers to engage with the many narratives concerning the historical importance of the thrombolites in evolution, the areas cultural history, the contradictory nature of agriculture and ecology, global warming and its effects, developmental impacts, evolution of animal species, bioprospecting, to the parallel between one of the fastest growing Australian regional cities to one of the slowest growing life-forms. ‘Adaptation’ promises a rich and diverse program of engagement for the community, the artists, researchers and science action groups involved with the Lake. 

 ‘Adaptation’ opens an important dialogue and debate surrounding human inaction, intervention, responses and responsibilities to the world at large. 

Adaptation Residents:

“The Autotroph” -  Oron Catts. Initial engineering concept was developed with the assistance of Ryan Kim

"The Sixth Shore" Perdita Phillips