care—fall

care—fall was an immersive installation artwork by Heidi Kenyon and Henry Wolff transforming a North Adelaide carpark into a speculative rain garden. Guided by principles of water-sensitive urban design, the work explored how water flows through and reshapes our cities, challenging human exceptionalism and inviting a reimagining of urban wildness. Plants, water, and sonic vibrations converged in a living, shifting environment that blurred the boundaries between the "built" and the "natural". At its opening, the gardens were activated through a performance that unfolded like weather. Guided by a score beginning in the golden hour, performers and visitors stepped into the rain gardens, receiving tuning forks to play across stone and soil and camera obscuras to invite new ways of seeing. The soft hum of metal, combined with the sound of Gabriella Smart on the Electric Cristal and the low tremors of vibrations in the soil invited a state of embodied listening—a collective act of care, of being held by sound and vibration. Gradually, these gestures built into a sonic storm: the experimental and interpretive soundscape amplifying the growing intensity until the site pulsed with shared resonance. As night fell, flares ignited—dazzling and volatile, their beauty inseparable from danger. For a moment, the gardens burned with light before falling back into darkness. In that flicker between nurture and rupture, care–––fall asked how we might hold space for both. This project was presented as part of the 2025 Nature Festival with support from the City of Adelaide. care—fall follows on from On collaboration, consumption & care: a project presented as part of Nature Festival in 2023, inspired by historical practices utilising plants to invoke spiritual awakenings as a way of decentring the human and opening up diverse ways of knowing and being in the world. As part of this work, Henry and Heidi examined how care as a methodology brings us closer to nature, and the nature of home, in a discussion with acclaimed author and plant studies researcher Dr Prudence Gibson. They also explored the meditative qualities of Australian-grown cacao, and presented initial artefacts including sound and photographic works at the Adelaide Botanic Garden.