Small Global / Undercurrent
ARTIST: D-Fuse
http://www.dfuse.com/
18 Oct 2007 - 14 Dec 2007 (from UK)
Small Global explores the impact of corporate giants on local economies and the environment using data-driven, multi-screened environments, 3D animation, still photography and vector maps to deconstruct our daily diet of convenience and technology.
Undercurrent explores the psycho-geography of urban life in cities in China and the UK, following rivers through post-industrial landscapes to investigate the effects of globalisation on private lives and public space.
http://www.apple.com/pro/profiles/d-fuse2/video.htmlhttp://www.apple.com/pro/profiles/d-fuse2/index.html
http://www.dfuse.com/installations/all/smallglobal/d-fuse.pdf
http://mic.org.nz/mic/2007/uncle-tasman-the-trembling-current-that-scars-the-earth/
Uncle Tasman: The Trembling Current that Scars the Earth 2007
Natalie Robertson (Ngati Porou, Clan Donnachaidh)
Uncle Tasman: The Trembling Current that Scars the Earth
4 May - 16 June / Gallery 2
Natalie Robertson’s Uncle Tasman: The Trembling Current that Scars the Earth is a three-screen video installation recorded at geothermal sites in the Eastern Bay of Plenty. Robertson draws on customary and contemporary mythologies of land and place to examine paradoxes of economic development and environmental destruction.
In pre-colonial times, the area was densely populated with people attracted to the natural geothermal springs. As newcomers from overseas arrived they were also attracted to the geothermal steam, establishing a paper mill in Kawerau, known locally as Uncle Tasman. In 1954 New Zealand government passed an act that allowed effluent from the mill to be discharged into the Tarawera River. The accumulated discharge has formed what Greenpeace calls the most serious toxic waste dump in New Zealand. Kawerau is Robertson’s hometown and has the highest age-standardised cancer registration rate of all health Territorial Authorities in New Zealand.
Robertson recorded local stories of the desecration of sites of significance that are contrasted with the scenographic beauty of the locations. Loss and grief emerge in the local tribal story of the love triangle of volcanic mountains Putauaki, Tarawera and Whakaari and it is the story of a clean, green New Zealand that comes under question as a geothermal lake smothered by waste, Rotoitipaku, is recalled by people who lived nearby.
For the indigenous kaitiaki or guardians of the area, the loss of this environment is the destruction of an important source of their spiritual and economic wellbeing. They are the ones who have remembered while others have forgotten. For others, the narrative of capitalist industries extracting wealth at the expense of natural resources is a reminder that what happened in Kawerau is not a story set in the past. Whatever our own histories, our well-being is implicated in someone else’s misfortune.
Natalie Robertson was born at the foot of Putauaki Maunga (mountain) and raised in Kawerau, Bay of Plenty. Natalie has exhibited extensively in public institutions throughout the Pacific and internationally including Close Quarters: Contemporary Art from Australia and New Zealand and Mapping Our Countries at the Djamu Gallery Sydney 2000.
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