Slow Burn/Night Vision

Slow Burn/Night Vision, 2014, video still.

Video link: http://youtu.be/kfcxRTMQbWY

This video work responds to public discourse about Australia’s foreign relations in 2014. Concern has mounted in response to international perceptions of the Australian government’s position on climate change, national security, national identity, refugee rights, immigration and economic relations. Arguably, international opinions of Australia’s position and influence in the world system have soured during 2014. Domestic critique insinuates Australia is burning bridges overseas. In critical social theory and critical media commentaries, geopolitics is posited as a game of strategy, surveillance, military and political relations. Foreign relations inherently involve subterfuge – the guarding and discovery of political, economic and martial secrets. Foreign relations are a game of smoke and mirrors, half-truths, deliberate falsehoods and obscured visions.

Slow Burn/Night Vision is a dual-channel video installation, with each channel responding to and visualising two interrelated themes about international relations invoked in the title: ‘slow burn’ and ‘night vision’. The aim is to create a meditative effect – to create a space for thought and reflection on the state of Australia’s foreign relations and place in the world vis-à-vis geopolitics. ‘Slow burn’ speculates on the burning and deterioration of Australia’s foreign relations. ‘Night vision’ presents aerial views of national parliament buildings – US, Canada, UK, EU, Russia and China (nations with which Australia has important relationships) – exploring foreign relations through buildings that materialise national integrity and international correspondence. Common motifs create a dialogue between the channels, in particular the concept of obscured vision – smoke-and-mirrors, night vision effects – and emergency/martial soundscapes. The backdrop creates another layer – another comment on global democracy and citizenship – that grounds both channels, literally, in their installation in space.

The approach to Slow Burn/Night Vision was inspired by the work of several contemporary artists working in different photographic and time-based media, including Douglas Gordon’s dual-channel video The End of Civilisation (2012) and the work of photographers Mishka Henner, David Thomas Smith and Trevor Paglen, whose art comments on the subterfuge of geopolitics, international surveillance and global visions.

Installation photographs, Black Box, COFA D Block, 7 November 2014.

Dual channels projected on 40cm x 40cm reflective perspex.