Earth & Elsewhere

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Earth and Elsewhere | Contemporary Works from the Collection 17 16 Earth and Elsewhere | Contemporary Works from the Collection
planets. From cloud formations and their changing shapes
and colours, he understands wind and rain patterns, and he can
foretell sad family news from observing the sky.12
In Passi’s paintings, the shape and openings in clouds herald
news of deaths in a family or the onset of weather patterns
affecting travel and the gathering of food in the Torres Strait.
In Void (#13) 1991–92 Anish Kapoor creates an expression of
the sublime that confronts us with our inability to comprehend
all possibilities. The sculptural void comprises a convex
hemisphere contained within a concave one, both rendered
in a deep blue pigment that conjures what Kapoor describes
as ‘the space beyond, illusory space’.13 The physical and
psychological experience of viewing the void recognises that
knowledge can be contained within a metaphysical context.
A psychological or cosmic space can be created with symbolic
forms, and experience can occur outside material form.
In his ongoing search to understand memory and the
relationship between human life and the life of the cosmos,
Patricio Guzmán has began work on a new film that follows
on from Nostalgia de la luz and posits the sea and water as
the earth’s memory:
The sea is a kind of planet within our planet, which preserves
memory, which is interesting because water arrived from
space; comets brought it. It was probable that life came
from beyond the earth, which is fascinating. It’s a possibility,
it’s not proved scientifically, but many astrophysicists are
thinking about the possibility that life could have come from
somewhere beyond the earth.14
Like Guzmán’s project, ‘Earth and Elsewhere’ stresses the
importance of the past (indeed, that we have no future without
the past) and highlights our collective desires to seek objects
and images that connect us with it. The exhibition queries
what binds these questions of personal and social desire to
bigger ideas about our place in history and the universe. From
the experiences of trauma seen on the ground, the exhibition
ends by looking outward, above and beyond, as an alternative
means of understanding and reconciling our relationships with
the past, present and future. For, as Guzmán urges, ‘the matter
of our bodies is the matter of the stars. We belong to the
Milky Way — that’s our home, not just the Earth’.15
José Da Silva, May 2013
Senior Curator, Australian Cinémathèque
Curatorial and Collection Development
Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art
ENDNOTES
1 Patricio Guzmán has remarked that ‘a country without
documentary film is like a family without a photo album’ and
spent his career creating films that explore the transformative
modern history of Chile — from former President Salvador
Allende’s (1908–73) attempts to establish democratic socialism
in the early 1970s, the ensuing military coup by Augusto Pinochet
(1915–2006) in 1973, and a country ruled by military junta until
1990. In 1991 the National Truth and Reconciliation Commission
released a 2000-page report (which became known as the Rettig
Report) on the human right violations that resulted in death or
disappearance during Chile’s military rule. It cited 2115 victims
of human rights violations, 164 victims of political violence and
641 cases in which the commission could not secure conviction.
The report took care to acknowledge the ongoing impact of
human rights violations on families of the victims as well as
the wide‑reaching and lasting impact this period of history
had on Chilean society. Stating: ‘. . . we believe there is one
thing that no one can deny: Chile has undergone a wrenching
tragedy.’ See:
truth_commissions/Chile90-Report/Chile90-Report.pdf, p.1118,
viewed 13 May 2013.
2 Dinh Q Lê cited in Moira Roth, ‘Obdurate history: Dinh Q Lê, the
Vietnam War, photography, and memory’, Art Journal, vol.60, no.2,
2001, p.44.
3 The farmers and the helicopters was made in collaboration
with Tu n Andrew Nguy n and Hà Thúc Phù Nam. The video
includes interviews with Lê Văn Đành, Tr n Qu c H i, Tr n Văn
Giáp, V ng Văn Bang, Ph m Th Hn g and Tr n Th Đào and
footage from Apocalypse Now (Francis Ford Coppola, 1979),
Platoon (Oliver Stone, 1986), The Deer Hunter (Michael Cimino,
1978), We Were Soldiers (Randall Wallace, 2002), Full Metal
Jacket (Stanley Kubrick, 1987) and Born on the Fourth ofJuly
(Oliver Stone, 1989).
4 Sontag argues further that ‘compassion is an unstable emotion,
it needs to be translated into action, or it withers’. See Susan
Sontag, Regarding the Pain of Others, Farrar, Straus and Giroux,
New York, 2003, p.7.
5 Chris Wiley, ‘Harun Farocki’, in 10,000 Lives: Gwangju Biennale
[exhibition catalogue], eds Massimiliano Gioni and Judy Ditner,
Gwangju, Korea, 2010, p.345. Massimiliano Gioni’s Gwangju
Biennale is an important example of recent exhibitions that
have sought to consider the agency of images and the complex
relations that bind people to images and images to people:
‘Images are the children of nostalgia: we create images of the
people we do not want to lose . . . The idea that an image can
save not just an individual, but the whole cosmos, should not be
dismissed as primitive or naive. Instead, it is an act of love toward
images and the power they possess.’, Gioni, p.426.
6 Jill Bennett, Empathic Vision: Affect, Trauma, and Contemporary
Art, Stanford University Press, California, 2005, p.24.
7 Jill Bennett, ‘Aisthesis and practicality’ in Practical Aesthetics:
Events, Affect and Art After 9/11 , IBTauris & Co Ltd, New York,
2012, p.3.
8 Lee has further stated: ‘Many later visitors come to realise,
through reading the letters of others that they too carried
unexpressed feelings that they would feel relieved to write down
and perhaps share. In this way, a chain of feeling was created,
reminding visitors of the larger world of emotions in which we
all participate. In the end, it was the spirit of the writer that was
comforted, whether the letter was ever read by the intended
recipient or others.’ See artist statement for ‘The Letter
Writing Project’, ,
viewed 13 May 2013.
9 Lee Mingwei cited in conversation with Eugenie Tsai (ed.),
Lee Mingwei: The Moving Garden, Brooklyn Museum, 2011, p.55.
10 Cynthia Webb provides an important description of the symbolism
in the earlier sculpture For those who have been killed 1992 that
is included in Christanto’s larger installation: ‘The horizontal
figure was inspired by a story told to him by a childhood friend.
Dadang’s young friend had been standing on a bridge in East Java
in 1965, and she saw many dead bodies floating under the bridge.
Dadang explained that the figure is raised above the ground,
supported by fine sticks, recalling the way the body of Mahabarata
hero, Bisma’s body did not fall to the ground but was held up
by the many arrows which had pierced it.’ See ‘Artist, Dadang
Christanto recalls 30 September in Brisbane’, The Jakarta Post,
October 2007,
artist-dadang-christanto-recalls-30-september-brisbane.html,
viewed 13 May 2013.
11 Christanto cited in Jim Supangkat, ‘Dadang Christanto’,
Asia–Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art[exhibition catalogue],
Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane, 1993, p.12.
12 Diane Moon, ‘Zenadh-kes: People of the Land, Sea and Sky’ in
The Torres Strait Islands [exhibition catalogue], Queensland Art
Gallery; Gallery of Modern Art, 2011, p.37.
13 Guzmán cited in Chris Darke, ‘Desert of the disappeared: Patricio
Guzmán on Nostalgia for the Light’,Sight and Sound, http://www.
,
viewed 14 May 2013.
14 Guzmán.