INFRACTIONS
  • Installation view: 'INFRACTIONS'. Photo: Louis Lim.

  • Installation view: 'INFRACTIONS'. Photo: Louis Lim.

  • Installation view: 'INFRACTIONS'. Photo: Louis Lim.

  • 'INFRACTIONS', 2019, 1:03:00, HD video, split screen with text, Dolby 5.1.

  • 'INFRACTIONS', 2019, 1:03:00, HD video, split screen with text, Dolby 5.1.

  • 'INFRACTIONS', 2019, 1:03:00, HD video, split screen with text, Dolby 5.1.

  • 'INFRACTIONS', 2019, 1:03:00, HD video, split screen with text, Dolby 5.1.

  • 'INFRACTIONS', 2019, 1:03:00, HD video, split screen with text, Dolby 5.1.

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INFRACTIONS

18 September 2020–19 December 202018 Sep 2020–19 Dec 2020

#INFRACTIONS

Premiering in Australia at the IMA is INFRACTIONS, a feature length video installation in dialogue with frontline Indigenous cultural workers’ struggles against threats to more than 50% of the Northern Territory from shale gas fracking. As Australia becomes the leading exporter of planet-warming fossil fuels globally, and Asia and the EU plan to increase fracked gas imports, pressure on this region has intensified, threatening hard-won Aboriginal land rights and homelands.

Plans to ‘Develop the North’ of Australia have been resurrected at different moments since the nineteenth century, but abandoned just as quickly for being built on fantasies that related little to the actual behaviour of monsoonal-desert water systems. With the lifting of a state moratorium in 2018, British, US, and homegrown mining companies seek to roll out toxic drilling rigs over vast underground flows, which are key connecting sites of culture, law and food for First Nations.

Refuting capitalist and colonial models of land and water in the driest continent on earth, INFRACTIONS features musician/community leader Dimakarri ‘Ray’ Dixon (Mudburra); two-time Telstra Award finalist Jack Green, also winner of the the 2015 Peter Rawlinson Conservation Award (Garawa, Gudanji); musician/community leader Gadrian Hoosan (Garrwa, Yanyuwa); ranger Robert O’Keefe (Wambaya), educators Juliri Ingra and Neola Savage (Gooreng Gooreng); Ntaria community worker and law student Que Kenny (Western Arrarnta); musician Cassie Williams (Western Arrarnta); the Sandridge Band from Borroloola; and Professor Irene Watson (Tanganekald, Meintangk Bunganditj) contributor to the draft UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, 1990-1994.

As the camera connects incommensurable legal geographies, extractive industry and labour history to ongoing Indigenous-led resistance and movement, defenders of culture and water from Ntaria (Hermannsburg), Marlinja (Newcastle Waters), Borroloola in Gulf Country, and Yallarm (Gladstone, Queensland) warn of stories of manufactured consent, and Indigenous legal theorist Irene Watson explains the limits of the Western international legal system for planetary survival and justice.

Upcoming Conversations:

Panel Discussion: Art in an Age of Gas Destruction
Thursday 15 October, 6.30–8pm
Institute of Modern Art

This panel 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. The conversation looks to discuss the relationship between ‘the situation’ of gas-fired futures, matters of cultural responsibility, survival, and refusal. Join Vernon Ah Kee, Phillip Marrii Winzer, and Que Kenny with INFRACTIONS director Rachel O’Reilly to discuss the work of doing things otherwise. Hosted by Warraba Weatherall.

Panel Discussion: Arts of the Frontline [ONLINE]

INFRACTIONS features First Nations campaigners fighting threats to 51% of the Northern Territory from shale gas fracking, where 90% of the population relies on groundwater. Since the unconventional gas industry’s birth in Queensland, Australia is now the leading exporter of this fossil fuel globally, while since the filming of INFRACTIONS the Federal Government has since doubled down on planet-warming gas projects as the solution to pandemic ‘recovery’. This panel updates on the current state of play for gas frontiers in the contemporary moment.

Dan Robins has been an organizer against unconventional gas across Australia for more than a decade, currently working with the NT Protect Country Alliance. Before that Robins was the Sydney Coordinator with Lock The Gate Alliance working on the Our Land Our Water Our Future Campaign to stop invasive coal and gas projects across NSW. Robins has also assisted with anti fracking campaigns in QLD’s Scenic Rim area and in WA. In 2015 Robins presented at the International Anti Fracking Conference in Paris during the COP21 UN Climate Change Conference.

Neola Savage and Juliri Ingra and their 5 siblings are descendants of Dot and Hector Johnson who were active in the struggle for rights for Aboriginal and South Sea Islander peoples rights in Gladstone. The Johnsons were part of the first generation of Aboriginal teachers’ aids in Central Queensland, training in Melbourne at Deakin and Brisbane in mid-life. Juliri Ingra is an artist (die work and fibres) while Neola Savage continues Indigenous education and liaison work in Woorabinda. 

Off-Site Venues
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