11.55 AM – 12.10 AM
University of Brighton, 154 Edward Street, BN2 0JG
Holly Birtles’ abstract explores how her project Fighting Fish, developed through work on the Thames and later the Adyar and Cooum rivers in Chennai, investigates ecological destruction, myth, memory, and care by combining performance, analogue photography, and AI-generated imagery to reimagine polluted rivers as sites of layered truth and speculative storytelling. Through darkroom experimentation, staged performances, and interactions with MidJourney to create AI-assisted “digital objects,” Birtles reimagines narratives in which truth emerges through concealment, ecological fact, and mythology, offering new ways to understand environmental grief, governmental neglect, and the memory of rivers.
Holly Birtles is a London-based photographic artist whose interdisciplinary practice combines performance, analogue and digital photography, and AI. Her work examines ecological trauma, slow violence, myth, and memory through performed responses to place. She exhibits internationally and is Course Leader of BA (Hons) Photography at the University of Brighton.