Echo works

From 2021-22 Oskar was an Agent of Change for the 10th Architecture Biennale Rotterdam, in which capacity he undertook research into one particular species of infrastructure – ‘echo works’ – structures that reverberate with the logic of the famed hydrological fortifications of the Dutch coast, even as this logic is increasingly seen to be outmoded, if not completely futile. Oskar argued that these works include the chain of seawalls built on the duneland of the east coast of Australia, whose geometry secures private property against wave action while degrading the commons of the public beach. An important aspect of these local echo works is the place of the beach itself in the Australian imagination – as both the expression of the Australian lifestyle par excellence and a zone of exclusion and domination.

As part of the project, Oskar and the IABR co-organised a seminar to discuss the themes of echo works more broadly. The event brought together spatial practitioners and researchers from Australia and presented a number of positions on land – occupation, time, the visual culture of catastrophe, and nationalist myth – to better reveal the work that has already been done, and that which is yet to be done.