Metabolic Scales: Online Reading Group

Join us for an online reading group led by Open Spatial Workshop (Terri Bird, Bianca Hester and Scott Mitchell). Across three sessions we will discuss key research texts that either inform or expand on the concerns of their work Metabolic Scales 2022-2025. Open Spatial Workshop will be joined by expert interlocutors to deepen the thinking and discussion.

This reading group welcomes everyone - students, researchers, artists, artworkers and individuals with an aligned interest. You are invited to engage at the level you feel comfortable with, and we value all kinds of discussion. 

Details: 

This program will be held online via Zoom. The Zoom link and additional details will be sent to you upon registration.

Session 1: ‘Iron,’ Material World by Ed Conway. With Professor of Economics John Quiggin.

12:30pm AEST, Thu 1 May

Session 2: 'Some Thoughts about the Philosophical Underpinnings of Aboriginal Worldviews,' by Mary Graham. With interdisciplinary biologist Coen Hird.

12:30pm AEST, Thu 15 May

Session 3: ‘Indigenous accumulation and the question of land: the Kimberley region of Western Australia in the second half of the twentieth century,’ by Tony Smith.

12:30pm AEST, Thu 29 May

This program is in conjunction with These Entanglements: Ecology After Nature.

----------------------------------------------------

About the artwork: 

Metabolic Scales explores metabolism and extinction (life and death) in relation to the unbounded consumption of resources. Based primarily on research and fieldwork in the Pilbara, Western Australia on the lands of Nyamal and Kariyarra custodians, this new commission explores biological, geological, and social entanglements.   

The work follows multiple material flows from the earliest forms of microbial life to the extraction of iron ore, and the circulation of this mineral in the global market. The physical movements of iron ore are captured through video footage and live vessel tracking data: from its mining in the Hamersley Range to its export as one of Australia’s most significant mineral resources, traded across global shipping routes, and transformed into industrial steel for nation building and consumption. The capital circulation of iron ore’s value in the global financial markets is indexed through live data on an LED screen. 

Mined from banded iron formations, iron ore owes its geological origins to a biological one—cyanobacteria—a microorganism pivotal in the origins of life. Credited with ​the initial production of ​oxygen, cyanobacteria are regarded as the most successful organism on Earth. They developed a metabolism that obtains energy through photosynthesis, passing it onto other life forms such as plants and animals. Today, cyanobacteria are found as symbionts with other interdependent life, such as fungi, lichen, and corals, as well as in the human body. 

This transformation of Earth’s atmosphere is registered in marine bacterial fossils known as stromatolites, which can be found in the Pilbara. A milled steel reproduction of a stromatolite is included in this installation. Formed by communities of cyanobacteria, stromatolites are known as ‘living fossils’, created through the interaction of biological and geological processes, blurring the boundaries between life and non-life. 

​​Over millions of years, stromatolites transformed the Earth’s atmosphere​ in what is known as the ‘Great Oxygenation Event’, which led to the first major extinctions and the formation of banded iron. By referencing past climate crises, Open Spatial Workshop offers ways of considering our rapidly collapsing future in relation to Earth’s deep material histories.  

----------------------------------------------------

Speakers:

Open Spatial Workshop (OSW) is a collaborative trio comprised of members Terri Bird (Associate professor, Department of Fine Art, Monash University, Melbourne, Victoria), Bianca Hester (Associate Professor in Arts, Design, and Architecture at the University of New South Wales, Sydney), and Scott Mitchell (artist and lecturer based in Melbourne, Victoria). Selected exhibitions and public works include Metabolic Scales, Earthen Group Exhibition, Cement Fondue, Sydney (2023); Converging in Time, MUMA, Melbourne (2017); Anthropocite (public artwork and online video), Earth Sciences Garden, Monash University (Clayton campus), Melbourne (2015); and Performing Mobilities: Traces, RMIT Gallery, Melbourne (2015). In 2017, OSW published Converging in Time in collaboration with MUMA and Perimeter Books. This publication won the AAANZ best University Art Catalogue award and the Museums Australia Publication Design Award for a major exhibition catalogue in 2018.

John Quiggin is a Professor of Economics at the University of Queensland. He is prominent both as a research economist and as a commentator on Australian public policy. In the course of a long and varied career, he has worked extensively on problems of environmental and resource management, including the Murray-Darling Basin, the Great Artesian Basin, land degradation and global heating. He was a member of the Climate Change Authority from 2012 to 2017 and has served as President of the Australian Agricultural and Resource Economics Society.

Coen Hird is an interdisciplinary biologist researching and teaching in anticolonial scientific praxis. Coen has scientific expertise in ecological and evolutionary biology, molecular biology and animal physiology and has published academic works across disciplines. Coen has broad interests in centering Indigenous priorities and Indigenous rights in scientific research, emphasising respectful engagement with Indigenous communities. Coen's work bridges cultural and scientific gaps, fostering a deeper understanding of Indigenous ways of coming into knowledge as a valid scientific endeavour. Coen is a trawlwoolway pakana related to northeast lutruwita (Hearps, Briggs family) and accountable to the Tasmanian Aboriginal community. Coen grew up as a visitor to many lands in so-called Australia and currently is associated with Yuggera and Turrbal lands around Magandjin.

----------------------------------------------------

Image Caption: Open Spatial Workshop (Terri Bird, Bianca Hester, and Scott Mitchell), Metabolic Scales 2022-2025, banded Iron, LED sign, moving image, sound, mild steel, installation view, These Entanglements: Ecology After Nature, The University of Queensland Art Museum, 2025 (Detail). Courtesy of the Artists. Photo: Joe Ruckli.