ARCHIVE 2005-2025

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FACE OF THE EARTH research activities 2005-2025

Face of the Earth was a series of long-term interconnected research projects, involving environmental mapping and curated landscapes, geographical ecosystems and cultural tourism, artist expeditions and experimental fieldwork.

Choules is interested in fragility, the mobility of material and an environmental shift in human nature. Using a trans-media approach, they investigated earth systems and structures, in particular the movement and behaviour of animate and inanimate objects. Through experiential and embodied fieldwork methods they monitored geographic and geomorphic shifts, whilst considering geology an ongoing event. Their surveys have taken place in mountain ranges, forests and deserts, rivers and lakes, natural parks and remote islands, post-industrial landscapes and urban centres. Against a pervasive anthropocentric view their work probed a collapsing of environments, contributing to a wider discussion on instability and change. They explored how slow capture in an age of acceleration influences image/object making as a form of material transformation and transportation.

As an independent scholar, Choules presented academic and performance papers on the subject/object of fieldwork in artistic practice in addition to a prolific series of public live events and artist talks on a new environmental (re)turn. Their research considered the dynamic form of landscape, and their work engaged with the challenge in recording and broadcasting time-based practice. They have been a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society since 2007 and coordinated workshops for artist-led expeditions and fieldwork planning activities as part of the annual Explore event for over a decade. They participated in collaborative and multi-authored fieldwork and shared research through publications and other public platforms.

Through various commissions, residencies, collaborations and projects, Choules explored a range of metaphysical, sensorial and poetic thematics: ideas on geoecologies and human behaviour; the viewpoints and monuments of collapsing environments; and the slippage of perception, distance and materiality in digital technologies.