Set in a near-future alternate Los Angeles, The Alluvials explores an alien watery world through the perspective of various animal characters. Situated around the once concreted LA River, the game’s protagonists reside in a series of interconnected worlds of desertified towns, dried up lakes, and the headquarters of a private water company. Raising questions about the shifting stakes of water in these worlds, Bucknell draws from Jack Halberstam’s theory of ‘unworlding‘ and Flusser’s concept of device to dismantle an anthropocentric worldview of water scarcity and drought.

Questioning what relations to water matter in a time of ecological collapse, The Alluvials contends with Flusser’s ideas of nature-culture dualism that emerges from his analysis of natural cultural phenomena, such as rain, in his collection of essays Natural:Mind (2013).

During her residency, Bucknell investigated contemporary and historical data (flooding years, pollution index, mineral contents, etc.) from various bodies of water – including the concretised LA River and the swampland that Berlin was built upon – to construct a swampscape ecosystem that stretches beneath a tangle of intersecting highways.