‘INFRACTIONS’ is a feature length video installation platforming the struggles of frontline Indigenous cultural workers 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 the winner of 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.
‘INFRACTIONS’ is the final work of The Gas Imaginary (2013–19), a project by artist, writer and curator Rachel O’Reilly that has used poetry, drawing, moving images and lecture formats to explain the legal, aesthetic and technical conceits of ‘unconventional’ gas, in ongoing dialogue with Gooreng Gooreng elders and women environmental activists.
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Directed by Rachel O’Reilly, 2019, 1:03:00, HD video, split screen with text, Dolby 5.1
Presented in partnership with the Institute of Modern Art
Acknowledgements
Commissioned by KW Berlin Production Series, dedicated to artists’ moving image (supported by the Julia Stoschek Collection and OUTSET Germany_Switzerland). Additional support: Australia Council for the Arts
FEATURING (in order of appearance of country):
Jack Green, community leader and Telstra Award finalist (Garawa, Gudanji)
Gadrian Hoosan, musician and community leader (Garrwa, Yanyuwa)
Robert O’Keefe, ranger (Wambaya)
The Sandridge Band from Borroloola
Cassie Williams, musician (Western Arrarnta)
Que Kenny, community worker and law student (Western Arrarnta)
Juliri Ingra, artist (Gooreng Gooreng)
Jackie Johnson, educator (Gooreng Gooreng)
Neola Savage, educator (Gooreng Gooreng)
Dimakarri ‘Ray’ Dixon, musician and community leader (Mudburra)
Professor Irene Watson, a contributor to the draft UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, 1990–94 (Tanganekald, Meintangk Bunganditj)
Creative Credits:
Director/Research/Camera/Sound: Rachel O’Reilly
Producer: Mason Leaver-Yap
Editor/Visual Research: Sebastian Bodirsky
Camera: Tibor Hegedis, Colleen Raven (Nharla Photography)
Sound mastering: Jochen Jezussek
Map visuals: Valle Medina, Benjamin Reynolds (Pa.LaC.E)
Subtitles: Katharina Habibi
Image
Rachel O’Reilly, INFRACTIONS 2019. HD video, split screen with text, Dolby 5.1. Image courtesy: the artist