Kirsten Millar

My work is an enquiry into the Scottish landscape, connecting the archaeological and industrial by looking at the varied and forgotten legacies, tales and manipulations of the environment. It deconstructs conventional images of the Scottish landscape, often romanticised as wild, untouched and separate from modernity and human influence, by eroding the binary categorisation of nature and technology.


Existing in-between fact and fiction, ancient and modern, my work is speculative and slips in and out of time periods by examining the anthroposphere (the part of the environment made or modified by humans). I explore these overlapping relationships using psycho-geographic techniques of ‘drifting’ and ‘playfulness’ by embedding myself within the landscape to connect with unseen and intangible temporalities and histories. These findings are expressed through sound that uses a mixture of archaeoacoustics, acoustic ecology, archival sound and installations that play with archival and collected materials. I extract materials that exist within the landscape, playing with layers of time by referencing artifacts found, structures that exist and those yet to be created using prefabricated industrial and scrap materials. The false dichotomy of nature/technology that informs my research is reflected by my choice of materials that sit on the cusp, opposing and mirroring each other, blurring the lines between organic and synthesised, femme and industrial, escaping categorisation and occupying realms of speculation.

https://kirstenmillar.cargo.site/