This discussion takes off from the work of Infractions, specifically its use of the moving image to address the colonial infrastructure and cultural dimension of fossil gas expansions. Hear Que Kenny, Phillip Marrii Winzer, Vernon Ah Kee, Infractions director Rachel O’Reilly, and host Warraba Weatherall discuss the relationship between the situation of gas-fired futures, matters of cultural responsibility, survival, and refusal, and the work of doing things otherwise.
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Que Kenny (Western Arrarnta) is a community support worker, artist, and activist from Ntaria/Hermannsburg, west of Alice Springs in the Northern Territory. She is studying law at Deakin University, Naarm/Melbourne. She has been involved in grassroots campaigns against the Northern Territory Emergency Response (‘The Intervention’) since 2007, and against Northern Territory gas fracking with the Protect Country Alliance. She has contributed to numerous fictional and environmental films and community projects, and accompanied Infractions to its Berlin and London launches. Her work has been profiled in Rolling Stone and The Guardian.
Phillip Marrii Winzer is a Ngarabul and Wirrayaraay Murri, a member of Warriors of the Aboriginal Resistance, and former Organising Manager for Seed Indigenous Youth Climate Network. They are currently involved in activism around deaths in custody and refugee detention. In June, they organised a crowd funder to buy back twenty acres of stolen land rich in biodiversity and cultural heritage, near the defunct Kingsgate Mines at Red Range, on Ngarabul country.
Vernon Ah Kee is a member of the Kuku Yalandji, Waanji, Yidinji, and Gugu Yimithirr peoples. His work addresses ongoing colonial injustice and ancestral relations through drawings and text works, videos and installations. His 2010 video Tall Man used handheld camera footage of a community gathering on Palm Island following the release of the results of a coronial inquiry into Cameron Doomadgee’s death.
Rachel O’Reilly is an artist, writer, curator, and PhD researcher at Goldsmiths’ Centre for Research Architecture. She is the director of Infractions, the final work in The Gas Imaginary (2013–20). Recent curatorial collaborations include Ex-Embassy, Berlin; Planetary Records: Performing Justice between Art and Law, Contour Biennale; and Feminist Takes on Black Wave Film for Sternberg Press. She writes with Jelena Vesic on Non-Aligned Movement legacies and Danny Butt on artistic autonomy. She teaches How to Do Things with Theory at the Dutch Art Institute.
