Emma Smith William Bardebes 2019 SM
William Bardebes’ and Emma Smith’s collaborative work The sound of the floor (2019) propositionally collages neglected industrial and suburban areas, both real and imagined. Vast tilt-wall buildings, pylons, water towers, fluttering flags, distended silos document a cultivated yet decivilized landscape of industry, neglect, of corporate colonization and consumption. Sites and landmarks from Bardebes’ and Smith’s local landscape of the Auckland Whau area are overlaid with haunting stacks of terrifying weaponry through which the viewer weaves, positioned as a visitor in this floating world of post-truth dispossession.