Alice Bucknell’s The Alluvials

In 2023, artist Alice Bucknell released The Alluvials, a video work filled with wolves, moths, and sediment that looks at a version of Los Angeles in the near future. In this California city, the sand that had once been characteristic of its beaches has taken over downtown, effectively turning the sprawl of highways and skyscrapers into a desert of dunes and dust. Through this speculative lens on an alternate reality, Bucknell presents both the history and consequences of this dried-up world. The work examines the history of the Tongva people of the Greater Los Angeles Basin while also imagining the water desalination corporation Qwench, a perpetually burning landscape, and an eternity in which the sky remains in its golden hour.

A year later, the project evolved into The Alluvials video game (2024), a multilevel game that explores the world inside the film.…