Unmapping the End of the World, a key event of the Mildura Palimpsest Biennale #10, 2015. Sunset over Lake Mungo, Willandra Lakes Region, with participating artists.
Photo: Sasha Hüber
UNMAPPING the End of the World
Jonathan Kimberley and Yhonnie Scarce
Cultural exchange isn’t the right way to describe it. I think it’s
bigger than that. It’s not just about making art in response
to this trip. A lot of it is about creating oral history, sitting
around and talking, getting to know each other.
Yhonnie Scarce
Unmapping the End of the World is an intercultural, durational
and experimental contemporary art project that brings
together a contingent of fourteen artists from many
nations across Australia and around the world for a unique
collaborative journey across three UNESCO World Heritage
Sites: Willandra Lakes Region World Heritage Area, Mungo
National Park, Australia; Kumano Kodo World Heritage
Pilgrimage Walk, Japan; and Valcamonica Rock Art World
Heritage Site, Italy. The project will culminate with a major
collaborative installation for the Mildura Palimpsest
Biennale #10, in October 2015.
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Participating artists are: Julie Gough (Tebrikunna),
Yhonnie Scarce (Kokatha/Nukunu), Jim Everett
(Plangermairrenner), Daniel Browning (Bundjalung/Kullilli),
Daryl Pappin (Mutthi Mutthi), Ricky Mitchell, (Paakantji),
Daniel Crooks (Australia), Jonathan Kimberley (Australia),
Sasha Huber (Haiti/Switzerland/Finland), Mishka Henner (UK/
France), Camilla Franzoni (Camuni/Italy), Koji Ryui (Japan/
Australia) and Kumpei Miyata (Japan) | Lyota Yagi (Japan).
Unmapping the End of the World differentiates itself from
the cataclysmic agency of universal globalisation – the
highly presumptive and mistakenly benign world project.
Instead, it provides the context for a diverse group of artists
coming together from around the world to demonstrate
a collaborative intercultural approach over a defined
period of time and for the purposes of a contemporary art
biennale. The Mildura Palimpsest Biennale embraces the
World’s intransigent diversity. We aim to arrest the global
homogenisation of language, along with the economies
and ideologies that are the product of hegemonic ‘lifestyle
choices’ which we believe herald the end of the world’s
diversity. By fostering a contemporary re-examination of
the nexus between what might be called ‘the virtual and
the grounded’ through active participation in knowledge
sharing between cultures in specific places and presenting
collaborative new work in direct response to this, Unmapping
the End of the World asks the key question: What does
belonging to ‘Country’ mean in an age of globalisation and
technological revolution?
There is first of all the problem of the opening, namely, how to
get us from where we are, which is, as yet, nowhere, to the far
bank. It is a simple bridging problem, a problem of knocking
together a bridge. People solve such problems every day. They
solve them, and having solved them push on.
J.M. Coetzee
Contemporaneity is ‘the problem of the opening’ but not
of ‘the bridging’. It is also a responsibility. The problem of
the bridging, and perhaps the ‘simple’ solution we suggest
is: intercultural collaboration. Which means that no matter
the good intentions of neo-modernist rhizomic composition,
so prevalent in today’s contemporary art, it is quite clear that
there is nothing to be ‘pushed on’ from. We suggest that the
‘solution’ is, and always will be, intercultural collaboration.
As such a combination of deep cultural knowledge and open
collaboration will be required from all.
I think this is unique, because often you might travel to other
people’s country, but there is nothing quite like this where we
are actually travelling together to many countries. People often
think that they can just drop in for a short time and it will be
real, but that doesn’t work. This is different because it is about
finding pathways.
Yhonnie Scarce
Artlink Issue 35:2 | June 2015
Unmapping the End of the World has been reliably informed
by an ongoing, long-term collaboration between Jonathan
Kimberley and Puralia Meenamatta (Jim Everett), since 2004.
Tasmania is not an official part of the Unmapping the End
of the World journey in 2015, but it could just as easily be in
the future. It is instructive to begin this story in Tasmania.
Jim and Jonathan presented their first collaborative project,
meenamatta lena narla walantanalinany | meenamatta water
country discussion, which was deliberately described as a
discussion rather than an exhibition in Hobart in 2006.
They see their project as perpetual and indistinguishable
from each other, and as one work. It draws on medieval
mapping as the pre-Renaissance heritage of Euro-Australia
alongside the complex Aboriginal language of meenamatta
(Jim Everett’s maternal country). Their writing within the
paintings relates to key sites in Meenamatta country and
references these common elements in medieval maps. Each
piece of writing is deliberately placed geographically within
the paintings and questions many presumptive understandings
about linear time and international history. When Jim and
Jonathan travelled to Italy together in 2009 to see Europe’s
oldest map, a rock engraving in Valcamonica, the Unmapping the
End of the World project was conceived as a way of bringing an
international group of artists into the discussion.
Julie Gough (Tebrikunna) is another Tasmanian artist
who comes to the project with significant intention and
whose intercultural dialogues made visible via diverse
and insightful installations critiquing the status quo are
vital to the discussion. Julie is particularly sensitive to the
world around her and her watchful approach and deeply
considered knowledge of country is omnipresent. Sasha
Hüber (Haiti/Switzerland/Finland) reconfigures notions of
intercultural alterity through incisive interventions across
many formats. Sasha is emotionally driven; the significant
historical content in her work is drawn from both her Haitian
and Swiss heritage. Mishka Henner (UK/France) is selfproclaimed as having no country. He has worked for the past
five years with materials sourced from the online world. His
insights are driven in part by actual sites of forewarning – for
example, industrial feedlots and military installations – that
usually remain hidden across the globe. His modus operandi
is subversive and critically reflective. Lyota Yagi (Japan)
is an irascible re-inventor, creating a singular dynamic
spatiality out of seemingly nothing. His merging of analogue
and digital, bakelite reclamation and kinesics is antipodal,
switching modalities between the old and the new. Daniel
Crooks (NZ/Aus) morphs time and shifts perceptions
of every-day spatiality through masterful digital video
modification. His everyday is highly attuned to the nuances
of in-betweenness and immediacy, that draws the viewer into
a portal of torqued insight. Daniel Browning (Bundjalung/
Kullilli) is best known as a radio presenter and producer,
yet his approach is as deeply considered and thoughtfully
re-presented as any artist. He is building a new sonic archive
that reflects many things, including a remarkable ability to
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Paakantji/Barkindji, Mutthi Mutthi and Ngyiampaa elders gather with artists and thinkers from the Unmapping the End of the World project on the edge of Lake Mungo,
Willandra Lakes Region UNESCO World Heritage Area, April 2015. Photo: Danielle Hanifin
hear and translate what might be considered silence into
profound insight. Two emerging artists integral to the project
are Ricky Mitchell (Paakantji), another sound artist working
primarily with oral histories and re-interpreting identities
between cultures, and Daryl Pappin (Mutthi Mutthi) who
works with what he calls ‘the art of experience’, documenting
people’s journeys through country via photography and
other forms of interactive engagement. Camilla Franzoni
(Camuni/Italy) is also an emerging artist who has recently
come to examining her Indigenous Camuni (Valcamonica,
Italian) heritage. Camilla’s work comes out of a core tradition
of informal Italian abstraction. Camilla describes her work
as primeval abstractionism, dissolving rationalism. Camilla’s
‘multiquadro’ works are open to a sense of infinity that is
manifest in the finite. Kumpei Miyata (Japan) attempts to
fly. His dynamic performance installations subvert static
ideologies and surfaces. The Kumano Kodo is Kumpei’s
father’s country. Koji Ryui’s family history is closely linked
to the Kumano Kodo region of Japan and the practice of
Koshinto, the ancient form of the Shinto religion. But his
dynamic and highly original sculptures belie any sense of
claimant knowledge. They are immediate, ruminant and
multivalent in their humble, self-contained iconoclasm. The glass
work of Yhonnie Scarce (Kokatha/Nukunu) is full of translucent
sagacity. Deeply personal, these vessels, present a permeable,
vulnerable skin that is incisive, dark and crystalline.
Any temptation to brand this journey as some kind of neoGrand Tour can be dispelled by the intercultural emergency
that goes unchecked every day in Australia and has existed
since 1788. This emergency became starkly evident when
the Western Australian government declared its intention to
evict 150 Aboriginal communities from their land, arguing
they are ‘economically unsustainable’. Prime Minister Tony
Abbott declared that it is not the Australian government’s
responsibility to fund the ‘lifestyle’ choices of Aboriginal
people. One question is this: what contemporary government
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in the world, as custodian of an entire continent, would
divest its land of the people who know more about the
continent than anyone else? Rather, it is the lifestyle choices
of neo-colonial, non-Aboriginal people that has led to the
dispossession of Aboriginal people, forced to move away
from their Country. What government in the contemporary
world would actively depopulate a continent, let alone
threaten to commit such genocide on its Indigenous people
today? Aboriginal connection to Country is not a lifestyle
choice and it is the responsibility of non-Aboriginal people to
recognise this injustice. Perhaps this emergency is a timely
reminder of what we see as leading to the end of the world. We,
as artists, in some small way, are actively demonstrating that we
can make a future together collaboratively between cultures.
Unmapping the End of the World eschews outmoded notions
of the ‘old and the new’ as markers of currency, relevance,
or identity, in favour of working with intercultural and
international contemporaneity in ways that are collaborative,
non-hegemonic and recognise that everything has always
been everywhere all at once … here. This knowledge is held
in ‘Indigenous Country’ all over the world. Despite being
the oldest idea known to humans, the verisimilitude of
global intercultural contemporaneity has emerged relatively
recently as a rapidly shifting reality for artists around the
world to reconcile. Navigating the convergence of many
diverse international traditions, technologies and ideologies
that are breaking with established westernising timelines in
meaningful ways is arguably the core artistic challenge that
defines our age.
Fourteen artists commenced the Unmapping the End of the
World journey together at Willandra Lakes Region World
Heritage Area, on 14 April 2015. Many other thinkers,
including traditional owners, elders, writers, archaeologists,
discovery rangers, artists and supporters were present and
integral to the project. This place is a highly significant and
iconic site of human occupation in Australia. Mungo National
Artlink Issue 35:2 | June 2015
ABOVE: Artist Sasha Huber at the Hongu Taisha Shrine, one of the three major destinations on the Kumano Kodo travelled by pilgrims for over a thousand years. Photo:
Jonathan Kimberley. BELOW: Artist Koji Ryui walking the sacred Kumano Kodo pilgrimage route as part of the Unmapping the End of the World project, April 2015.
Photo: Jonathan Kimberley
Park became famous with the discovery of the remains of
Mungo Man and Mungo Lady in 1974. Both are dated at
over 40,000 years old, irrevocably shifting archaeological
and international perspectives about Australia. Artists
and thinkers walk the Willandra Lakes system with local
Paakantji/Barkindji, Mutthi Mutthi and Ngiyaampa elders,
who strongly believe that 42,000 years is an inadequate
linear descriptor of many concurrent contemporary stories.
Scientific speculation that their forebears migrated to Mungo
is constantly countered with knowledge that they have
always been here in all time. Willandra Lakes is also home
to an extraordinarily beautiful 20,000-year-old fossilised
ancestral trackway, the most numerous ancient footprints
in one location in the world. The commencement of the
Unmapping the End of the World project at this site also marked
the inaugural intercultural ‘Willandra Wisdom Walk’ which
will ultimately traverse the entire length of the Willandra
Lakes World Heritage Area, made up of nineteen dry salt
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lakes over 2,400 square kilometres. Unmapping the End of
the World empowers local Aboriginal cultural knowledge in
resistance to the dominance of scientific readings of Mungo.
Kumano Kodo is one of only two UNESCO-listed
pilgrimage walks in the world, iconic in Japan’s history for
1,000 years. With its origins in Shinto and Buddhist religions,
the Kumano Kodo has long been considered a sacred site
associated with nature worship. Once open only to Emperors
and other royalty, as Shinto and Buddhism mixed, belief
around Kumano Kodo as a Buddhist Pure Land opened the
way to all. Notably, this was the first pilgrimage in Japan
open to women. Examples of the conflation of all time are
everywhere and palpable to those who walk the Kumano
Kodo. The correlation, for example, between the cyclical
re-building of the majestic shrine of Ise every 20 years,
as well as cycles of mapping and unmapping in cultural
placement or interpretation of religious icons, may not be
immediately apparent. This dismantling is an unmapping
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of presumptions about ‘originality’. The ‘originary’ shrine
is disbursed across Japan to live on as spare parts for other
shrines, following the ritual (re)building of the shrine of Ise
on a plot of land perpetually set aside beside it.
The Valcamonica Rock Art UNESCO World Heritage Site
in the Italian Alps is a stunningly beautiful valley flanked on
two sides by mountains and forests harbouring knowledge
of ancient and contemporary significance: knowledge of
intercultural life, humanity, trade routes between nations
and ceremony of both the local Indigenous Camuni and nonIndigenous peoples (post Roman and Christian invasions).
The famous ‘Bedolina Map’, arguably the oldest map in
Europe, is one among more than 300,000 petroglyphs in this
extraordinary valley, recording diverse cultures, peoples
and worlds unknown. The idea of Unmapping the End of the
World could usefully be contrasted with the ‘Bedolina Map’.
‘Mapping the Beginning of the World’ is as problematic in
Paakintji/Barkindji, Mutthi Mutthi and Ngiyampaa country
near the southernmost extremity of the lived world, as it is
in central Europe. Global revisionism of contemporaneity
makes it clear that any notion of the beginning or the end
of the world is as ultimately indefinable as the diversity of
cultures that describe them.
Walking together, sweating together causes something. The
total immersion makes people into brothers and sisters. It’s
about trust. There becomes a sense of real intimacy. I feel
empowered climbing these mountains with everyone. We’ve
relinquished something to be here.
Yhonnie Scarce
Artists enter a tunnel through the Kii Mountain range to Koguchi, on the Kumano
Kodo pilgrimage route, April 2015. Photo: Yhonnie Scarce
It is collaborative diversity that makes our collective World.
Not Conflict. Not Capitalism. Not Exclusivity. The ‘end of
the world’ is not nigh; it is, however, ever-present in our
collective actions that favour convenient homogeneity over
diversity. In whatever ways we might attempt to describe,
delimit or manipulate The World it won’t ever actually exist
as any one cultural idea. Fact–Reality: without cultural
diversity, there is no ‘World’. Concurrently, it is not for us to
know how or where a collaborative journey might take any
of us, but rather that we are open to how it might change us.
We are interested in how collaborative intercultural visions
can merge over time and coalesce into something otherwise
unimaginable.
Unmapping the End of the World is a project of Mildura Palimpsest Biennale #10
and culminates with a major exhibition across all gallery spaces at the Mildura
Arts Centre, opening on 2 October 2015.
Jonathan Kimberley is an artist and curator who develops intercultural and
collaborative projects across Australia and the world. He is currently Co-curator
(with Helen Vivian) of the Mildura Palimpsest Biennale #10, 2015.
Yhonnie Scarce is a contemporary glass artist who belongs to the Kokatha and
Nukunu peoples. Her work has been widely exhibited and acquired in Australia
and internationally.
OPPOSITE: The first torii gate on the artists’ journey in the Kii
Mountains in southern Japan, Kumano Kodo UNESCO World
Heritage Pilgrimage Walk, April 2015. Photo: Yhonnie Scarce
Artlink Issue 35:2 | June 2015
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