host / para-site is a site-specific, sculptural protest that explores the parasitic relationship between colonial infrastructure and the unceded land it occupies. Constructed from reclaimed political banners, rope and bricks, the work takes the “parasite” as both metaphor and material reality. Infrastructure feeds on Country. Extracting without reciprocity. Embedding itself into the host body of the land. 

The site host / para-site occupies holds layered histories of resistance, and gestures of care. The staircase has been a site of staff and student resistance before, holding protests in support of Tess Allas, an Indigenous lecturer and program director at UNSW, whose contract was not renewed after her programs were cut. The work draws on these acts of resistance and political action, along with stories shared by Clare Milledge about the Heart Garden’s creation, persistence and reciprocity- to shape its gestures of protest and care. Screen-printed images of the plants from this garden were layered onto the banners, visually expanding traces of the living land across invasive infrastructure. Displayed over the staircase, these banners obstruct physical passage and occupation; echoing the disruption of Country by colonial infrastructure, as well as the parasitic act of feeding on a host until its functions are compromised.

host / para-site asks how colonial infrastructures can be revealed as frameworks that harm both land and community, while appearing to increase in strength. By occupying and overwhelming the staircase, the work enacts obstruction, extraction and resilience, making tangible the tensions between possession and care, infrastructure and Country.