The new student precinct at the University of Melbourne marks what is becoming overwhelmingly clear about Australia’s university model: prestige and outward appearance count for more than the quality of education for students, and certainly takes precedence over ensuring fair and secure conditions for those who work in these institutions. It is therefore not so much the aesthetic or design of the building itself, but that it reflects something more pernicious that lies at the heart of higher education: a hollowing out of the system.

To consider my turn to Get Ready With me videos as a coping mechanism during a time of crisis is to explore my relationship to the future. Against the backdrop of an uncertain future, I view it as a nihilistic impulse – a deeply gendered way of negotiating crisis and break in belief or enthusiasm for alternative futures.

The depiction of climate change as opportunity is founded upon a particular notion of temporality, where the privileging of an imaginary future subsumes any knowledge of the devastation in the present or losses from the past. Most significantly, this view obscures the toll of climate change on human life as it is lived today.