Landscape of Mutability: Collection of 3 postcards for the mail art exhibition Landscape of Mutability

The experience of staying in one place during lockdown has helped me reacquaint with the Shetland landscape more deeply. I have experienced increasing despair about our relation to the environment, triggered by signs of construction for the Viking Energy Wind Farm which began in 2020 during the coronavirus pandemic after many years of public debate and local dissent. The Wind Farm will have 103 turbines with a combined height of 145 metres; it will become one of the largest onshore wind farms in Europe.

These cards show the first digital drawings I have made in response to the construction of the Viking Energy Wind Farm on Shetland’s Mainland. It has been painful to watch the Viking Energy Wind Farm construction as it makes visible inroads to the landscape, like armies of ants along the horizon, busily digging, excavating, displacing peat, blasting bedrock, filling pristine waters with silt. They violate our land, which has been made vulnerable and helpless in the face of the human hand of destruction. Diggers and trucks, with their flashing lights and clouds of dust, swarm across the landscape. How can we achieve sustainability in our lives without causing harm?

My understanding of landscape has been challenged, and my perception of our relation to landscape has shifted. I am sorry for the loss of landscape and irreparable damage to our environment for generations to come. I am not alone in my pain. It is felt by many in Shetland.

How can the removal of vast quantities of deep carbon storing peat possibly make a positive contribution to the global climate crisis?