The Falls Before Us

As part of Now or Never Festival, Melbourne, 2026

The Evan Walker Bridge has disappeared. Dissolved in a dense mist infused with methyl jasmonate, a plant distress pheromone. Invisible and airborne, it is a natural chemical exchanged between plants to warn of danger, physical and environmental. The pheromone is already a natural part of the airscape we inhabit. Its presence unsettles human centrality, drawing attention to communication, sensing, and intelligence that exist beyond our awareness, and part of our material reality.

The mist recalls a time before the bridge, when the banks were tangled with paper barks, River Red Gums, wetland shrubs. It remembers waterfall spray and the swirling atmosphere of the Birrarung, the river of mists that would gather and disperse. The invisible cry of distress lingers in the air, unnoticed by the city’s bustle of commuters and tourists, like the climate crisis itself. 

The bridge offers a convenient passage, linking the station to the south bank, a structure that feels fixed; assured. To obscure the bridge is to rehearse its undoing: to consider that what has been built can also be unbuilt, that the city is not inevitable, but thick with possible alternative futures.

Below, the Birrarung flows, the banks remember the roots, and the cry of distress acts like a diffuse broadcast of warning from trees long past to futures still forming.