Susan Norrie: Field Work 2006-2016

SUSAN NORRIE FIELD WORK 2006–2016

SUSAN NORRIE FIELD WORK 2006–2016

All images unless otherwise noted: Susan Norrie (born Australia 1953) aftermath (2016) Porong, Sidoarjo, East Java two single channel video projections, colour, sound 9 mins, 6 secs mins [LUSI]; 10 mins, 24 secs [shrimp farmers] Courtesy of the artist Š Susan Norrie

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FOREWORD The Ian Potter Museum of Art is delighted to present Susan Norrie: Field Work 2006-2016, a new moving image commission by internationally celebrated Australian artist Susan Norrie. Field Work 2006-2016 is the sixth in the Potter’s series of Vizard Foundation Contemporary Artist Projects, a creative initiative of the Vizard Foundation which offers mid-career and senior artists a significant grant to produce new work. Following on from previous exhibitions by Jenny Watson (2011), Geoff Lowe / A Constructed World (2012), Philip Brophy (2013), Stephen Bush (2014) and Julie Rrap (2015), it is perhaps not surprising that the series has successfully become a well-regarded mainstay of the nation’s visual arts calendar.

The Vizard Foundation Contemporary Artist Project is distinctive for its focus on mid-career and senior artists, and commendable in its acknowledgement that artists require support throughout their careers to continue to push their practice and create new, ambitious work. The Foundation’s commitment to a high profile artist such as Norrie duly recognises the difficulties that artists invariably encounter at this vital stage of their careers, almost in spite of growing exhibition histories on CVs and the continued development of their practice. Susan Norrie has not held a solo exhibition of her work in Melbourne since 2002 for example, and thanks to the generosity of the Vizard Foundation, the Potter is pleased to be able to offer her the opportunity to do so some fourteen years later. For the creation of Norrie’s ambitious new work aftermath (2016), the artist returned to Sidoarjo in East Java, Indonesia to the site of the LUSI mud volcano, first explored in her monumental work HAVOC (2006-07) with which she represented Australia at the 52nd Venice Biennale in 2007. Norrie’s return to this location nearly ten years later in aftermath demonstrates the interconnected nature of her film projects, and contributes powerfully to her sustained rumination on the impact of man-made and natural disasters, on the environment, on structures of power, and on the extraordinary resilience of humankind. I am sure that the exhibition will spark many connections for academics and students across the University and resonate powerfully with the Potter’s wider audiences.

This beautiful publication includes a recent interview between the Potter’s Director, Kelly Gellatly, and the artist that provides tremendous insights into Norrie’s complex and thoughtful practice.

I thank Kelly for her work on the project and congratulate her on her efforts. Thanks are also due to the Vizard Foundation for their ongoing support of the Potter, this exhibition, and the Contemporary Artist Project series as a whole. I acknowledge the Potter’s Curator/Exhibitions Coordinator, Samantha Comte and Museum Preparator James Needham for their invaluable assistance as well the entire Potter team for helping to ensure the exhibition’s success. Finally, we congratulate Susan Norrie and thank her for so generously sharing her work, and for the exhibition.

Peter Jopling AM QC Chairman, Ian Potter Museum of Art Board

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Previous spread: Susan Norrie (born Australia 1953) video stills of film projects from Defile through to RULES OF PLAY (2001-2014) see pages 42-48

AN INTERVIEW WITH SUSAN NORRIE Susan Norrie: Field Work 2006-2016 premieres an ambitious new work – aftermath (2016)

by Susan Norrie, one of Australia’s most highly regarded multidisciplinary artists.

To create this new work Norrie returned to Sidoarjo in East Java, Indonesia to the site of what has become known as the ‘LUSI mud volcano’ (a contraction of Lumpur, the Indonesian word for ‘mud’ and Sidoarjo – a subdistrict of the Porong area). She first explored this catastrophe in her sixteenchannel video installation HAVOC (2006-07), which debuted as part of Australia’s representation at the 52nd Venice Biennale in 2007. As such, the date range of the exhibition’s title, 2006-2016 represents Norrie’s commitment to and work as an artist ‘in the field’.

Since it began on 29 May 2006, the mud volcano (otherwise known as the ‘Lapindo mudflow’ because of the exploration activities of Lapindo Brantas, the Indonesian oil and gas company drilling in the area at the time) has subsumed thirteen villages and displaced tens of thousands of people. While debate around whether LUSI was a man-made or natural disaster continues to this day, the Indonesian authorities’ ability to stem the flow of mud – which at its peak was as much 180,000 cubic metres per day – remains frustratingly elusive.

In the two single channel projections comprising aftermath, Norrie juxtaposes the bleak and dystopian landscape of LUSI with the activities of local shrimp farmers, who harvest in ponds or dykes in the same region, and whose traditional and sustainable farming techniques draw on many decades of knowledge and experience. The work’s meditative pace, soundtrack and especially its painterly use of muted colour also reference Dutch landscape painting, recalling Indonesia’s complex history of colonisation. aftermath considers the convergence of traditional knowledge, ecology, science and technology, and consequently builds upon Norrie’s sustained rumination on the impact of man-made and natural disasters on the environment, on structures of power and the dispossessed, on the fine line between exploration and exploitation, and on the extraordinary resilience of humankind.

As she has said: In light of recent environmental and humanitarian disasters within Indonesia and the Asia Pacific region, there are many indicators and forewarnings that should be changing the ways that we think about the world It’s as if the elemental forces of nature seem to be demanding this seismic shift from humans. 1

The following interview is based on conversations and email exchanges between Susan Norrie and Ian Potter Museum of Art Director Kelly Gellatly since February 2016.

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Kelly Gellatly: aftermath has developed from a proposal that initially had you working in Japan, concentrating on the active volcano Sukurajima, which was once an island but is now connected, after an eruption in 1914, to the mainland’s Osumi Peninsula. In your own words, “metaphorically, this eruptive force represents primordial nature, as unreliable in its mood as its power is untameable.”

We have, however, ended up in East Java, Indonesia with aftermath, yet the connection between the two countries in your work, as in life, is neither tenuous nor accidental. Can you please explain what drew you back to Indonesia almost a decade since your last visit?

Susan Norrie: Going back to Indonesia almost a decade after filming HAVOC, my project for the Venice Biennale in 2007, wasn’t something that came out of the blue. It was an extension of my ongoing relationship with Japan. Prior to that first trip to Indonesia in 2006, I had been exploring possible projects with contacts at JAXA – the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency – as a way of expanding my focus on environmental issues. I have always been concerned with the socio-political implications of exploration and the impact on eco-systems and local communities, along with the collisions between traditional knowledge, exploration technologies and multinational investment in developing economies, and Japan at the start of 2006 launched the DAICHI (ALOS) [Advanced Land Observing Satellite]. As well as contributing to a precise mapping of the Asia Pacific region in particular, this satellite had the capacity to survey and monitor resource exploration and associated environmental issues.

As part of its space program, the Japanese researchers at JAXA were aware of seismic activity in Indonesia, which included the LUSI mud volcano eruption on 29 May 2006 and the disastrous ongoing consequences… unstoppable mud that submerged an ever-expanding area, displacing many thousands of people. One of the reasons for this comprehensive surveillance

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and accumulation of data was to instigate cooperative management and mitigation programs aimed at disaster prevention – an area that I was particularly interested in exploring.

Obviously things were changing dramatically because of the effects of climate change, but in regard to Indonesia particularly it was the monitoring of methane and the environmental impact of the burgeoning oil and gas industry, and an increasing network of inefficient, often leaking pipelines.

Whether the LUSI disaster was the result of volcanic activity or a mining accident, maintenance and governance in Indonesia is a complex socio-political issue and internationally there is much interest in outcomes and possible solutions. I have been fortunate through the internet to make contact with scientists across the globe who have devoted time to the causes and consequences and who have been willing to share their research with me. Along with the many exchanges I’ve had over the years with Barrie Pittock, formerly of the CSIRO, my Japanese research has been assisted by key individuals such as Mr Hamasaaki, Project Manager of the IBUKI GOSAT [Greenhouse gases Observing Satellite], and Dr Yokota from the National Environmental Agency in Japan.

In realising my Indonesian-based projects I’m indebted to Dr Mark Tingay, an Australian geologist and academic; Phillip Drake, a Chicago-based lecturer in Environmental Studies, and Professor Masato Iguchi, a Professor at the Disaster Prevention Institute at Kyoto University who is also the Director of the Sakurajima Research Centre at the base of the volcano, near Kagoshima in Kyushu.

I had the opportunity to interview Masato Iguchi in 2013. I was curious about the DAICHI satellite program and the monitoring of seismic and volcanic activity… especially the possible links between earthquakes and eruptions. Given the Fukushima nuclear disaster, an obvious focus for me was Sakurajima and the fact that it’s about 50km away from the Sendai nuclear power plant.

I discovered that his initial research and interest in methane gases had led to an interest in volcanology which in turn became an ongoing monitoring of the Asia Pacific region, especially the increased seismic activity around Sakurajima.

The interview formed the basis of my project RULES OF PLAY (2009-14), a work commissioned for L’avenir (looking forward), the 2014 Montreal Biennale. This video focused on Sakurajima and the life of those who live and work within its shadow; and on Sakhalin Island; located within the Arctic Circle and under Russian control.

Sakhalin’s developing oil and gas industry had been on my radar for some time and after getting the necessary permissions, I was able to visit the island in 2012. The link between Sakurajima and Sakhalin was the idea of coexistence… whether under the spell of a volatile and unpredictable natural force, or weathering life in harsh Arctic conditions as part of the drive to discover and extract oil and gas, the two locations encapsulated the precariousness of the human condition.

Thinking back to that first interview with Masato Iguchi, I guess I was trying to get out of him what he really thought about the realities of living in close proximity to an ageing nuclear power plant… especially one located within such a seismically-active landscape. But he didn’t seem able or didn’t want to answer that directly. Rather he talked around the issue from a scientific, philosophical and religious point of view. His response was quite poetic, which in many ways made his statements much stronger.

I decided I needed to interview him again. So in July 2015 I returned to Japan and met up with him, but this time without my Japanese cameraman and his assistant. I realised Masato Iguchi understood and spoke English much better than I had previously thought. This time my purpose was to dig a bit deeper about Sakurajima and its location, and soon our conversation shifted to the communities and their co-existence with the mountain. He admitted he felt a deep responsibility about his 30 years working as a volcanologist monitoring Sakurajima

and the importance of this research for the million people who live in the surrounding area.

While he is involved in disaster prevention and management, he is equally concerned with his role as an informant to the government or the bureau of meteorology, to ensure that data is readily available at any given moment. This time, we got around to discussing Fukushima and man-made disasters: not only did he admit that he thought Fukushima was a man-made disaster, but that the LUSI mud volcano in East Java was a man-made disaster as well.

With this, I realised that he too was very much interested in Indonesia and its many active volcanoes. He is a key contributor to a Japanese initiative for joint international research focusing on particular environmental issues – the Science and Technology Research Partnership for Sustainable Development (SATREP), another disaster management team he has been involved in for many years. During the interview, he suggested I attend one of their workshops that was to take place in Yogyakarta later that year, November 2015. It would be a joint Indo-Japanese forum focused specifically on volcanoes and especially on Mount Merapi, an active volcano located near the border between Central Java and Yogjakarta. Merapi had erupted at the end of May 2006 and is considered by many as a possible trigger for the LUSI mud volcano disaster.

This workshop/forum was a turning point for me with regards to the connections between my interest in Japan and my work in East Java.

Masato Iguchi was thrilled that I wanted to take my Japanese ‘team’ with me… so that is how I got back to Indonesia. Given the relative proximity, I planned to revisit the LUSI mud volcano… I wanted to see what had happened to the people and their land.

As an artist, what has been your experience working with scientists, and especially, crossculturally?

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Scientists are not unlike artists in some ways, at one level their work is a leap of faith, and often they don’t have huge amounts of funding.

While they are privy to new and often secret information, they are bound by the protocols associated with institutions, research and scientific methodology. At the same time however, many scientists have a strong moral compass and a sense of civic duty. In my experience, I have found the scientists I have contacted to be humanitarians and deeply concerned with environmental issues and sustainability.

Working inter-culturally – and across the internet – one has to be open, inclusive and transparent.

It’s about respect – not just for your colleagues and supporters, but about being sensitive to other cultures. With my Japanese team – my cameraman and his assistant/interpreter – it’s all about trust, and trust takes time to build.

This is one reason why I have focused on Japan in particular since 2009. I feel I have developed a working relationship that not only augments my working process, it enhances the finished project.

What are your reflections on going back to the LUSI mud volcano nearly ten years later?

Were there major differences in your sense of ‘the then’ and ‘the now’ in terms of what’s happening at LUSI and its impact on the community, or have things remained the same?

Returning to LUSI was strange… everything was so familiar but at the same time it wasn’t. When I was there in 2006/2007 people were really struggling with the devastation, the mud flow was a unique situation.

At the time – and indeed since – there have been many opinions about what caused the massive rupture. I tend to agree with those who think it was directly related to inadequate exploration procedures undertaken by Lapindo Brantas the Indonesian oil and gas company in control of the drilling, and Santos, the Australian company who were their partners at the time. It

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seems that the cladding or inner casing of the hole wasn’t appropriate – but there are many factors too that have contributed to arguments about who and what was to blame. One question remains: why were they drilling in such a volatile area anyway? Regardless, it’s the ongoing impact on thousands of people and the villages that is crucial. To go back and see this dry, cracked wasteland is harrowing… thirteen villages lie buried under all that solidified mud.

The scene was quite different in 2006/2007.

Buildings, factories and the villages were half submerged in this toxic sea. Ten years later, it’s deathly… walking over the land felt like you were walking over a vast tomb, all memories of a former life had disappeared… gone forever. This is what haunts. At the end of the day, despite the official explanations and the scientific discussions about how to solve the environmental problems, it’s the people who matter the most. A solution is crucial – it’s important that such an accident on this scale doesn’t happen again, but given the world-wide thirst for mineral exploration and extraction, I’m not sure the lesson has been learnt. Given that I was attending the SATREP workshop in Yogjakarta and that I had decided I would revisit the LUSI mud volcano, I contacted Mark Tingay again in relation to a New York Times feature by Rachel Numer [“Indonesia’s ‘Mud Volcano’ and Nine Years of Debate About Its Muck”, 21 September 2015} that quoted his research. He had already put me in contact with Hardi Prasetyo, an American-educated fellow geologist who is trying to establish a Geopark at the LUSI site; not only to deal with the ongoing disaster but to initiate research into such hazards and promote ways of ensuring the economic well-being of the people who live there. It was through Hardi – currently Chairman of BPLS [Badan Penanggulangan Lumpur Sidoarjo / The Sidoarjo Mudflow Mitigation Agency, a company formed by the government in 2008} that I gained access to the disaster zone. While suggesting that LUSI was the result of an earthquake and part of the complex seismic Arjuno-Welirang region, and that the mud volcano eruption was a geothermal manifestation of the conditions

in the area, I was aware that this view was counter to many of the views of scientists the world over. Perhaps the promotion of seismic causes has to do with shifting responsibility to avoid compensation… a major payout given the vast number of people who were made homeless. Also, as many critics of the government explanation suggest, it has a lot to do with the oil and gas industry itself and the right to be able to continue mining throughout Indonesia… both on land and offshore. Returning to your question, I was shocked by the bleakness and the all pervasiveness of the oil and gas industry and its seeming disregard for people’s lives if they happen to be in the way of resource exploration.

Depicting the guys who work the dredges, I see them like frontline soldiers… there they are working seven days a week, ten or so hours a day, constantly dredging and stemming the mudflow. The machinery too seems tired and rundown… a sobering sight for me; the futility very poignant. In 2006/2007 the situation was dramatic – it was headline news. Taking the story to Venice (another ‘sinking world’) was a way of showing what was really happening for the people as the disaster was unfolding. This time the LUSI site is bleaker… it is no longer hitting the headlines. LUSI is something that continues to haunt me, so returning was an attempt at some kind of resolution both personally, and because I felt the project was unfinished. The aim of presenting HAVOC in Venice was to represent to a wider audience the power of human resilience… I hope with aftermath, I’ve done that again.

The inclusion of the footage of the shrimp farmers as a single-channel projection was a relatively late development in the realisation of the project. It represents an important aspect of your investigation… the changes to both the environment and the remaining community since the eruption. Can you elaborate on this?

The shrimp farmers are an important connection

between Japan and Indonesia. First there’s a link to Japan through Alter Trade – a company initially based in Shinjuku, Tokyo, that has been in operation since 1992 – who established a sustainable eco-shrimp farming system in East Java. So in terms of this project, there was already an existing Japanese-Indonesian relationship in the area affected by the mudflow.

The second connection is the focus on sustainability and, for me, the shrimp farmers continuing a very traditional way of working the waterways. This highlights for me the significance of indigenous knowledge… especially in the face of the disaster, that in this instance, one could link with ‘technological progress’.

The other thing that fascinated me seeing the famers in these ponds was the efficiency and the controlled way they worked. As a counterpoint to the dredging, the shrimp farmers represented an aspect of Indonesia that I had noted previously.

Because a lot of the mud from the volcano is being pumped back into the Porong River which is parallel to the Brantas River and feeds into tributaries, my initial concern was that the dredging would have been a disaster for the shrimp farming industry. As depicted in the film, while the shrimp farmers – and perhaps the shrimps – appear to have adapted to the circumstances, I cannot help but feel that they, like many other villagers, are the exploited ones.

For me, this sequence encapsulates coexistence, adaptation and ultimately, basic human survival.

Can you describe your approach to the installation of aftermath at the Potter? What you’ve effectively created is two single channel projections, but in fact they comprise one work.

There’s an essential symmetry to aftermath and the two rooms at the Potter were ideal for my installation. It was obvious to me that if the walls and floor could be black then an immersive cinematic effect would be created. Symmetry is a crucial factor within the films: in one there are dredges working in the vast pools of mud and water around the mud volcano and, in the other, shrimp farmers are working in the ponds. With

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the dredging there’s a sense of disenchantment and futility in the work; the shrimp farmers however, have developed an engagement with their working environment.

Prior to the LUSI disaster this was agricultural land populated by many villages: it was a delicate eco-system ruptured by the mud volcano disaster. What’s amazing though is that despite the LUSI eruption and the devastating mud flow that submerged the surrounding area, the shrimp harvesters and the workers on the dredges represent a form of resistance: the former intent on continuing their traditional work, the latter on preventing the endless mud from overflowing the embankments constructed to contain the disaster by redirecting the mud mixed with water into the already swollen Porong River, as a way of managing the catastrophe and to stop further flooding of the land.

But in the end, regardless of the background story, my approach to documentary filmmaking is to create an experiential work where the viewer is put into the position as a witness, the narrative unfolding before them in the present. For me this is all about the potency and metaphoric power of the moving image.

The sense of resilience you focus on… the extraordinary capacity of human beings to carry on in the face of adversity is obviously very important to you.

Totally. I think it’s a key focus of most of my film projects. Even though, at times, the subject matter may appear quite bleak, I think given the recent history of man-made and natural disasters, and the consequences of human error, bleakness is inevitable… especially when you’re dealing with exploration technologies.

I think the fact that human beings are often driven by greed… it’s impossible not to imagine nature taking revenge!

What remains astounding – and of great fascination to me – is the capacity of people to adapt and survive, drawing on that spirit of

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resilience in times of unbelievable misfortune.

The ability to pick up and carry on… the courage, is something that I hope shines through no matter how bleak the terrain or how dark the world may seem.

Finally, I wonder if you could speak about the intersection of film, documentary practice and video installation in your work. Do you consciously see and craft a moving image work such as aftermath as an amalgamation of these different but related disciplines?

Well I was brought up in the era when television was first beamed into our homes… and when glossy, photographic magazines like Life brought the world and major events closer to Australia.

Thinking back to those times, the 60s and 70s, I was captivated by that stuff… how it all rolled into this vast montage of images, memories, movement and colour.

In the 1990s many artists began to create what I consider to be a more research, archival-based practice. I know this is when my work began to absorb aspects of my upbringing… I consider these to be crucial, formative years. Once I spent much of my time in libraries, combing the shelves and trawling through archival footage for all sorts of material, but now the internet is a vast readily available resource. I guess you could say that I was starting to work with the world… even if initially it was a world that came in via the TV and magazines. Thinking about it, embracing photographic, reprographic and digital technology into my practice is a continuation of something I had always done.

Since the 1990s this amalgamation of material, technology, process and presentation has changed not only the ways in which artists work and think about the world, it suggested ways artists and art could draw attention to social, political and environmental issues. For me, the fascination was the insidious power of broadcast media… the manipulations, the blurring of fact and fiction and political purpose. What emerged for me was a need to explore ‘the-in-between

of things’… the lies beneath the surface of things. I sometimes think about this as ‘citizen journalism’… as ongoing field work; a necessary way to begin to talk about the world.

What you say in terms of those definitions of practice is interesting because it seems to me that your decades as a painter have an important role to play in your film work; you feel it – they’re often quite painterly in a way.

When you think about it, history painting documents life. While we think about the history of painting as a rich legacy that informs art practice today, it is also a history of the world, civilisations and events – whether they be myths and legends, religious stories or allegories, frontier or sublime landscapes, portraits or celebratory narratives. History is as much about human triumphs as it is about catastrophes and environmental disasters.

When I look at my video installations…

UNDERTOW, even HAVOC, it’s all there.

There’s a very strong connection with the history of painting, and especially the elemental aspects… the visceral qualities of oil, mud, stickiness etcetera.

For me there’s no difference between history painting, photography, film and the documentary genre… it’s just that in the latter, the image is moving!

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BIOGRAPHY SUSAN NORRIE was born in 1953 and lives and works in Sydney. While initially known for her painting and installation, she has become increasingly renowned within Australia and internationally for her work in film, although her engagement with both painting and the moving image continue to influence each other and intersect across her practice. Susan Norrie represented Australia at the 52nd Venice Biennale in 2007.

Over the course of her three decade career, Susan Norrie has had many solo exhibitions including, Notes for Transit and Notes from Havoc, Giorgio Persano Gallery, Turin, Italy (2011 and 2009 respectively); notes from underground, Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney (2003); FORECAST, Nancy Hoffman Gallery, New York, USA (2001); Grey Goods, Art + Industry Biennial, Jonathan Smart Gallery, Christchurch, New Zealand (2000); Susan Norrie, Art Gallery of Western Australia, Perth and Susan Norrie, Rena Bransten Gallery, San Francisco, USA (both 1999); Shudder, Experimental Art Foundation, Adelaide (1998); Loophole and Inquisition, both Mori Gallery, Sydney (1996); error of closure, Artspace, Sydney (1994); Susan Norrie, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney (1994); Susan Norrie Projects 1990-1995, Museum of Modern Art at Heide, Melbourne (1994) and room for error, City Gallery, Wellington and Waikato Museum, Hamilton, New Zealand (1993).

Selected group exhibitions include, Lurid Beauty: Australian Surrealism and its Echoes, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne (2015-16); Kent State: Four Decades Later, University Art Gallery, The University of Sydney (2010); Molten States, GSK Contemporary, Royal Academy of Arts, London, UK (2008); un_imaginable, ZKM Center for Art and Media, Karlsruhe, Germany and Ivan Dougherty Gallery, University of New South Wales, Sydney (2008); Taking Time: Tempo ao Tempo – Biennale of Time Based Media, Fundacion MARCO, Museo de Arte Contemporanea de Vigo, Spain (2007); Everywhere, Busan Biennale, South Korea (2006); Plug-In, FUTURA Centre for Contemporary Art, Prague, Czech Republic (2004); Future Cinema: The Cinematic Imaginary After Film, ZKM Center for Art and Media (2002) and touring: Kiasma, Helsinki, Finland and ICC – NTT Intercommunication Center, Tokyo, Japan (2003-04); Signs of Life, Melbourne International Biennial, Melbourne (1999); Trace, Liverpool Biennial of Contemporary Art, Tate Gallery, Liverpool, UK (1999); All this and heaven too, Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art, Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide (1998); Virtual Reality, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra (1994); Frames of Reference: Aspects of Feminism in Art, Artspace, Sydney (1991); Emerging Artists: Selections from the Exxon Series, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, USA (1987); Origins + Originality + Beyond, 6th Biennale of Sydney, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney (1986); Australian Visions: 1984 Exxon International Exhibition, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York (1984), and touring: Australian Centre for Contemporary Art (ACCA), Melbourne (1985).

Susan Norrie’s work is represented in major public collections within Australia as well as corporate and private collections in Australia and internationally.

www.susannorrie.com

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FILM PROJECTS Defile, 2001, single-channel video installation 2002

ZKM Center for Art and Media, Karlsruhe, Germany

THERMOSTAT, 2001, multimedia installation 2001 KIASMA Museum of Contemporary Art, Helsinki, Finland

School of Fine Arts Gallery, University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand

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Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney

UNDERTOW, 2002, six-channel video installation 2002

Melbourne Festival, Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne

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Bloom: Mutation, Toxicity and the Sublime, Govett-Brewster Art Gallery, New Plymouth, New Zealand

FACE UP – Contemporary Art from Australia, Nationalgalerie im Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin, Germany

eddy, Laurence Wilson Art Gallery, University of Western Australia, Perth

Contemporary Projects, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney

2004

Gus Fisher Gallery, University of Auckland, New Zealand

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Norrie said of the work at the time: “The world should be coming together collectively to deal with real issues… around the environment, health and education and humanitarian concerns. I’m hoping that people will leave this installation thinking about where we are at this point in time, and where we are going.” 2 PASSENGER, 2003, five-channel video installation 2003

notes from underground, Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney

Royal Academy of Arts, London, UK

Living Together is Easy, Contemporary Art Center, Art Tower Mito, Japan and National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne

ENOLA, 2004, single-channel video installation with custom built stools 2004

14th Biennale of Sydney, On Reason and Emotion, Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney

Royal Academy of Arts, London, UK

l oop // not video, nor cinema, neither television, Cinema Capacete IV, Festival de Cinema do Rio with the Festival Rio, Instituto de Audiovisual Escola de Cinema Darcy Ribeiro, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Fundacion MARCO, Museo de Arte Contemporanea de Vigo, Spain

2005 World Without End, Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI), Melbourne Susan Norrie: “Rather than using film as passive consumption I am interested in making it into a state of active discussion. The autonomy of art and its connection to social history is a contradiction, a tension that runs through the discipline of visual culture like a fault line.” 3

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BLACK WIND, 2005, single-channel video projection 2005 Amsterdam Sinfonietta, Het Muziekgebouw, Amsterdam, The Netherlands; De Bijloke, Gent, Belgium; Verkadefabriek, s-Hertogenbosch, The Netherlands

Royal Academy of Arts, London, UK

2006

Amsterdam Sinfionietta, Adelaide Festival, Adelaide

HAVOC, 2006-07, sixteen-channel video installation 2007

52nd Venice Biennale, Palazzo Giustinian Lolin, Venice, Italy

Artes Mundi, Cardiff, Wales

Royal Academy of Arts, London, UK

ZKM Center for Art and Media, Karlsruhe, Germany

As Jill Bennett has written of the work: “Venturing into the terrain of the disaster, shooting footage of a community living through the event, Norrie confronts the classic dilemmas of ethnographic documentary: how to tell a story that belongs to a community, whose members become collaborators in its making, and who have specific aims and interests in the project.� 4

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SHOT, 2009, single-channel video projection 2009

Edinburgh International Festival, T he Enlightenments, Collective Gallery, Edinburgh, Scotland

As the artist has said of this work: “SHOT was based on the Japanese Aerospace Agency (JAXA) and the island of Tanegashima where the IBUKI satellite was launched. IBUKI was the world’s first greenhouse gases observing satellite aimed at measuring levels of the two major greenhouse gases (concentrations of carbon dioxide and methane) and leaks from existing gas pipelines. After witnessing the oil/gas drilling catastrophe in Porong, East Java during 2006-07, I imagined that sense of humanity would begin to inform resource exploration and technology – especially in the wake of catastrophic consequences – and, in turn, address issues of exploitation and the precarious balance between the increased demand for natural resources and the plight of indigenous peoples in areas of excavation.

The name of this satellite is Ibuki, which means breath, vigour, a brighter future. IBUKI will observe carbon dioxide concentration in 56,000 locations around the world and is the first satellite able to gather such detailed information on CO2. It can also observe the presence of methane, one of the major causes of global warming…” 5

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TRANSIT, 2011, single-channel video projection 2011 Yokohama Triennale, OUR MAGIC HOUR – How much of the world can we know?, Yokohama, Japan

Sights and Sounds: Global Film and Video (Australia), Jewish Museum, New York, USA

Star Voyager: Exploring Space on Screen, Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI) 2013 Ja Natuurlijk – how art saves the world, Stichting Niet Normal, Amsterdam; Gemeentesmuseum Den Haag, The Hague, The Netherlands 2016

Tate and the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, purchased jointly with funds provided by the Qantas Foundation

Susan Norrie: “During 2011 I interviewed the shaman Yoshimaru Higa on the island of Okinawa whose voice is heard in Transit. My continuing interest in environmental satellites were an element in Transit and the message to the Japanese audience at the Yokohama Triennale was a message of hope. When one is dealing with collective trauma and shame it’s often important to create a means of escape or other imaginative and possible worlds. This is where scientists and artists share similar attributes – experimentation and the imagination – a leap of faith into the unknown.

Transit also represented technology’s inability to control the forces of nature.” 6 “TRANSIT – especially for the Japanese audience post-Fukushima – was intended as a message of hope. When one is dealing with collective trauma and a sense of shame it is important to imagine another possible world. TRANSIT is an attempt to encapsulate the conflict between human capabilities and vulnerabilities, the challenges associated with technological advancement, and the unpredictable, catastrophic forces of nature.

Since 2004 I have been working on projects in conjunction with the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), a space centre that has been in operation since the 1960s.

I have witnessed several satellite launches from Tanegashima – each designed for a specific mission: to monitor world weather patterns, environmental disasters (man–made and natural), land and sea observation, greenhouse gases, security networks, and defence systems.

Working in collaboration with Japanese specialists, my projects explore the many indicators and forewarnings that should be changing the ways we think about the world. Strangely – and almost daily – the elemental forces of nature seem to be demanding this seismic shift from humans.” 7

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DISSENT, 2012, single-channel video projection 2012

Porte Negro, Gallery Hidde van Seggelen, London, UK

2014 20th Biennale of Sydney, You Imagine What You Desire, Cockatoo Island, Sydney Susan Norrie: “In many ways Dissent represents the concept of citizen journalism which is based upon public citizens playing an active role in the process of collecting, reporting, analyzing, and disseminating news and information; driven by different objectives and ideals and relying on alternative sources of legitimacy than traditional or mainstream journalism.” 8

RULES OF PLAY, 2009-14, single-channel video projection 2014 La Biennale de Montreal 2014, Musee d’art contemporain de Montreal, Montreal, Canada Susan Norrie: “Sakhalin Island is at the western extreme of the so-called ‘Pacific Ring of Fire’ where deep in the stormy Sea of Okhotsk, oil and gas platforms withstand the impact of subarctic weather, seismic and geological activity.

The earthquake on 11 March 2011 in northern Japan and the subsequent nuclear accident at Fukushima, not only made the world aware of the dangers of nuclear energy, it made the Japanese people acutely aware of their energy usage and their reliance on imported energy sources.

In 2012 I travelled to Sakhalin Island with my Japanese cameraman and his assistant. The LNG [Liquefied Natural Gas] plant at night appears in Rules of Play, but the majority of the footage focuses on the fishermen in these island cultures as a metaphor for human survival in extreme environmental conditions. I became aware of Sakhalin Island in 2009 whilst I was working on SHOT. My research trip to Sakhalin Island in November 2012 provided access to Sakhalin Energy, a conglomerate involving Gazprom, Shell, Mitsui, and Mitsubishi.” 9

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1.

Email correspondence with the author, 12 March 2016.

2. Gabriella Coslovich, “Of gods and monsters�, The Age, 1 November 2002 at https://www.accaonline.org.au/sites/default/files/2002_Susan%20Norrie_Nov%201_ The%20Age_Of%20gods%20and%20monsters.pdf, accessed 12 January 2016 at 11.10am 3.

Susan Norrie, Daniel von Sturmer, Callum Morton, 52nd International Biennale of Art, Venice, Melbourne University Publishing Limited, Carlton, 2007, p. 17.

4. Jill Bennett, Practical Aesthetics: Events, Affects and Art after 9/11, I.B. Tauris & Co Ltd, London & New York, 2012, p. 142.

5.

Susan Norrie, 2009. Provided in email correspondence with the author, 7 January 2016.

6.

Susan Norrie, 2011. Provided in email correspondence with the author.

7.

Susan Norrie, 2015. Provided in email correspondence with the author, 13 June 2016.

8.

Susan Norrie, 2011. Provided in email correspondence with the author.

9.

Susan Norrie, 2014. Provided in email correspondence with the author.

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Susan Norrie would like to thank: Kelly Gellatly

Director, Ian Potter Museum of Art & curator of aftermath

The Vizard Foundation Dr Mark Tingay

Department of Exploration Geophysics, Curtin University, Western Australia & Adjunct Associate Professor, Australian School of Petroleum, Adelaide University, South Australia

Dr Hardi Prasetyo

Chairman, Sidoarjo Mudflow Mitigation Agency / Badan Penanggulangan Lumpur Sidoarjo (BPLS), Sidoarjo, Indonesia

Professor Masato Iguchi

Disaster Prevention Institute, Kyoto University & Director of the Sakurajima Research Center, Kyushu, Japan

Achmad Room Fitrianto

Lecturer & Researcher, Syariah Faculty, The State Islamic University of Sunan Ampel, Surabaya, Indonesia

Dr Barry Pittock

former Head of the Climate Impact Group, CSIRO, Canberra

Ian Potter Museum of Art staff: Samantha Comte

Curator / Exhibitions Coordinator

James Needham

Museum Preparator Dr Olivia Meehan Curator Academic Programs

Rachel Morrison

Events & Public Programs Coordinator

Margee Glover

Communications & Marketing Officer

Marianna Berek-Lewis 5678 Design

Production Credits: Concept/Edit Camera Camera Assistant Editing Sound Mix

Susan Norrie Rodo Izumiyama Kumpei Miyata Wayne Love Robert Hindley

Harry Yuli

Director, PT Altertrade, Sidoarjo, Indonesia

Bagus Julianto

PT Altertrade, Sidoarjo, IndonesiaÂ

Iwan Hamza

Shrimp Harvester, Sidoarjo, Indonesia

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Installation of aftermath (2016) [LUSI] at the Ian Potter Museum of Art

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Installation of aftermath (2016) [shrimp farmers] at the Ian Potter Museum of Art

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Susan Norrie: Field Work 2006-2016 The Vizard Foundation Contemporary Artist Project 2016 Curated by Kelly Gellatly Published by the Ian Potter Museum of Art, the University of Melbourne, on the occasion of the exhibition Susan Norrie: Field Work 2006-2016, 15 March to 3 July 2016.

Text © 2016, the authors and the Ian Potter Museum of Art, the University of Melbourne Images © 2016, Susan Norrie This catalogue is copyright. Apart from fair dealing for the purposes of research, criticism or review as permitted under the Copyright Act 1968, no part may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted by any means without the prior permission of the publisher. The views expressed in this publication are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of the Ian Potter Museum of Art or the publisher.

ISBN 978 0 7340 5284 1 Design by 5678 Design Printed by Bambra Press, Melbourne Photographs of the exhibition pp. 68–71

by Christian Cappuro The Ian Potter Museum of Art The University of Melbourne Victoria 3010 Australia Email potter-info@unimelb.edu.au www.art-museum.unimelb.edu.au Patron Lady Potter AC

The Vizard Foundation

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