Output details

Archipelagoes

Archipelagos is an installation involving a series of moving film and still images. Shot on location in Jakarta, Indonesia, and around one of South East Asia’s biggest landfill sites ‘Bantar Gebang,’ the images depict the post volcanic landscapes of the region around Krakatau, Indonesia. A series of photographic images and films were created by the animation of gps points in the journeys of the artist around Anak Krakatua, and of the trashpickers of the landfill Bantar Gebang. The artist walks out the landscape with film strips strapped to his feet, using digital GPS location devices to direct the territory traversed. This process creates marks on the film, with the intention to materially embody the destructive aspect of the location’s history. Together the images form stories, fragments and experiences of socially and politically marginalised groups. Marks of the artist’s own journeys around the same landscapes perform the concept of place and memory that are produced by the occupation of natural disaster sites. Environmental relationships are emphasised in image and film that map back the economic relationships to place through recycling and waste matter, detritus and jetsam. The work has been exhibited in ‘Peripheries’ (Asia Triennial Manchester, 2011) and accompanying publication ‘Peripheries’ (ISBN: 9781905476664) and as ‘Archipelagos’ in the Sandao Gallery, Xiamen University.