of chance encounters, families, fighting clans, gangs, Ăœmwelt, landowners, kinship, totems, boredom, heavy metal, love, motivation, hunting, Unheimlich, education, Thamarrurr, 4x4, Perrederr, distances, tradition, superstition, frustration, wars, murder, blood, rainforest, dry air, red sand & sun
of LAW & LORE /
chance encounters and tracing cultural specificities in Wadeye, Australia
/
Julie Vermeersch 2012-2013
“Two hypotheses about chance. One: all things are destined to meet each other, only chance makes sure this doesn’t happen. Two: all things are disorganised and unrelated, only chance allows them to sometimes meet.” Jean Boudrillard, Fatal strategies, 2008, p 224
‘Chance’ is a vague concept, a shadowzone that has proven to be of utmost importance in my perception of the outside world. A concept that has been generally ridiculed or even neglected within the current, fast-consuming mindset as it doens’t necesarrily and directly generate a return or visible result. However, it is exactly this fragile chain of unexpected events that might lead to certain unscripted situations and that might lead me on unforeseen not-premeditated voyages into the unstable unknown. Chance is a choice, for me. It is a valuable ingredient to my decisionmaking and a buildingblock in the development of my personal grammatics and vocabularium. So, now I explicitly stated that ‘chance’ is my choice, this also implies that chance is more than just ‘luck’. It is an always-present companion.
This book is the result of my uncontrolled wanderings into the very remote and recluse community of Wadeye, Australia. Be warned: don’t expect an encyclopedical compendium or repertorium. This is not a travelogue, not a topology of the community, neither a sociological study nor antropological research. This is not a random gathering of snapshots nor a common portfolio nor an evergrowing, unedited archive and no, it is not even a scenario. So, what is this book, if it is none of the above? Let’s start, after this negative onthology, after this definition of what it is not, to allow some space for something positive, to do a tracing of what it might be... it is an emotive-impressionist gaze... a detailled representation of all impressions I capture, a mapping of the situations that I have met as an accidental passenger. It is that and that’s it. And, within the graphical architecture of this book, I try to present and share my gaze (and that of my subject) with you in an intimate way. This shadowzone, this open spot in the dark, is what its all about. It is a rhytmic motion through moments. An expression of my love for what I see, might have seen, feel, might have felt, for the world surrounding me and the gaze that reflects in mirrors, eyes or the calm blueish water surface.
1 of chance encounters, kinship, fighting clans, families, gangs, landowners, boredom & strange blue hues
2 of nature, habitats, tolerance, love, education, Thamarrurr rangers, dry communities, gangs & living without time
3 of death, murder, grief, cercles vicieux, resilience, heavy metal gangs & those left behind
4 of sun, shadow, silhouettes, Perrederr, dry air, camps, prison, dust, distances, emptiness & the hot red sand under our feet
5 of joy, survival, isolation, difference, hunting, loneliness & the heavy sky
6 of entrapment, desperation, abandonment, architectures & pale greens
(addendum) of LAW & LORE / Disposable Experiments /
A subject-reversed study in which the children experiment with disposable camera’s to explore how they see themselves, their world and me; a game of distances.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Derrida, Jacques & Richter, Gerhard. Copy, Archive, Signature. A Conversation on Photography (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2010) Brutvan, Ceryl Sophie Ristelhueber. Details of the World (Boston: MFA Publications, 2001) Deitcher, David & Watney, Simon Wolfgang Tillmans. (Kรถln: Taschen, 2002) Falkenberg, Johannes Kin and Totem (Oslo: Oslo University Press, 1962) Foglia, Lucas A Natural Order (Portland: Nazraeli Press, 2006) Ivory, Bill Kunmangurr, Legend and Leadership (Melbourne: Charles Darwin University, 2009) Lynch, David & Chris Rodley Lynch on Lynch. Revised Edition (New York: Faber and Faber Inc.,2005) Ogden, John. Portraits from a Land without People. A Pictorial Anthologie of Indigenous Australia 1847-2008. (Sydney NSW: Cyclops Press, 2009) Pirsig, Robert M. Zen en de kunst van het motoronderhoud. Een onderzoek naar waarden (Amsterdam: Ooievaar, 1999) Prince, Richard & Lethem, Jonathan Richard Prince: Collected Writings (Santa Monica: Foggy Notion Books, 2011) Riefenstahl, Leni. The Last of the Nuba (New York: Harper & Row,1974)
Roodenburg, Linda De Bril Van Anceaux: Volkenkundige Fotografie Vanaf 1860 (Utrecht: Waanders B.V. Uitgeverij) Rorty, Richard. Contingency, irony, and solidarity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994) Sternfeld, Joel. Sweet Earth: Experimental Utopias in America (Göttingen: Steidl, 2006) Sontag, Susan. Fascinating Fascism (New York: The New York Review of Books, 6 februari 1975) http://www.history.ucsb.edu/faculty/marcuse/classes/33d/33dTexts/ SontagFascinFascism75.htm Stanner, W.E.H. The dreaming & Other Essays (Collingwood: Black Inc. Agenda) Tatay, Helena e.a. Hans-Peter Feldmann. 272 Pages (Barcelona: Fundació Antoni Tàpies; Kôln: Museum Ludwig, 2001) Van Reybrouck, David & Carl De Keyzer Congo (Belge) (Tielt: Uitgeverij Lannoo, 2009) Wechsler, Max Günther Förg - Fotografie (Bremen: Kunsthalle Bremen, 2006)
— Text & images by Julie Vermeersch Graphic design by Jan Mast @ LIGHTMACHINE agency © 2012 2013 A Dream(e)scape Production