Second Nature: Resilience focuses on normally invisible fluctuations and all the small shifts that secretly, inexorably, add up to epic transformations. This video installation depicts an abandoned house in the forest gradually collapsing as time, nature, animals, and the elements take over and ultimately transform it. It reads as a time-lapse shot over several years, in reality, it is stop motion animation shot over many months, with the ruin and decay painstakingly animated by hand. From destruction there emerges a transformative beauty – the house becomes uninhabitable to some, but in its decay becomes refuge for others. Nature is endlessly narrating stories – we just have to sit still long enough to read them. Veronica Verkley’s practice is centered on the resilience of animals and their experiments in navigating the fluctuating borders between human/animal territories. Over time patterns emerge, individuals become familiar, migrations occur, undergrowth thickens, and stories unfold. This animation is distilled from those daily observations.

Changes in our environment are nearly imperceptible unless sped up as a time-lapse. Trees suddenly spring up and fall back to earth as generations of species eat, sleep, and die. The very shape of the land fluctuates as days, seasons, and decades pass. Incremental shifts add up to epic transformations as climates and ecologies falter, regenerate, and flourish. Built structures eventually collapse while living systems adapt and evolve. Life is resilient.