Revolutionary Terrains is the result of a collaborative research workshop by UniSA Masters of Architecture students. It uses experimental ways of reading and depicting Australian regional landscapes, architecture, and artifacts as a terrain of colonial ambition, imposition, and obsolescence.

Across nine Aboriginal lands and declining country towns, 16 archetypal ‘monuments to the everyday’ were selected as evidence of conscious and incidental colonization. These town halls, silos, clubs, and courthouses were reimagined as speculative drawings of uncanny objects, invading the lands of First Nations peoples.

Each alien image is oriented simultaneously to origin, destination, and the star Acrux – central to the Emu in the Sky, Koodjal Koodjal Djookan, and Southern Cross constellations, significant to both First Nations and Western cultures. Animated as a 16-minute video, the ghostly journey superimposes multiple perspectives of place, occupation, time, and signification. What might be the ‘afterlife’ of the things we build if we consider and care for them in larger cultural, temporal, and celestial contexts?