Ancient Imaginings
an interview for Sovereign Apocalypse Zine with Jenny Fraser 2015
Sovereign Apocalypse: Can
you provide some thoughts on your future imaginings of sovereignty?
Jenny Fraser: Even
though Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders are only a 3% minority in
Australia, Indigenous people internationally make up 6% of the worlds
population. While it may not seem like we've got the numbers, we are
actually the largest of all the minority groups, and we manage to
cover 20% of our planets land mass, and therefore 80% of the worlds
remaining Biodiversity.
It's
a good feeling to think that as times get tougher, we maybe able to
rely on each other, and our cousins in the international community,
for sharing knowledges and resources required toward survival and
longevity.
With
that in mind, maybe it can help to rise above oppression and relax
more into committing ourselves to our own direct stream of
consciousness, and be able to unfold a greater, inherent
understanding of ourselves, as a culture, as living spirit. If
we make efforts to decolonise, to go with our own flow, and are true
to ourselves, then I'm sure that our ancestors will smooth the way
for us.
Sovereign Apocalypse: How
do Indigenous knowledge's of creation or cosmology influence your
work and practice?
Jenny Fraser: Although
Indigenous Knowledges and cosmology are sometimes difficult to search
out, and there is a considered silencing of this in the Australian
vernacular, I am always interested in redressing this by quoting and
referencing other Aboriginal people in my own projects.
The
namesake of our recent online art project titled Superhighway
across the Sky
is inspired by a song from the world famous Aboriginal band Yothu
Yindi.
Leading
Yothu Yindi songman, Dr M Yunupingu and his visual artist sister, Ms
G Yunupingu, both of whom only just died during the culmination of
this project in recent years, were solid cultural leaders from the
bush, with international profiles.
Over
the years, I have gained a lot of inspiration from Ms G Yunupingu
both in her work as an artist and also importantly as a healer.
Motivated
by stories from her father, she developed her own design style which
is known as Garak the Universe, which are 4 pointed stars, that also
reference connection between all people who look up and see
constellations. Her designs and explanations are very powerful, both
visually and conceptually.
So,
along with the song title for the project, I also tried to reference
this important and worldly perspective on the Superhighway project
T-shirts, by using an X in repetition. The shirts were a cyberTribe
15th
anniversary limited edition and offered exclusively as gifts to the
project participants and our Native Canadian hosts.
The
official launch of Superhighway
across the Sky,
at the 2014 imagineNATIVE Film and Media Arts Festival in Toronto was
meant as a fitting and touching tribute to these Yolngu leaders and
their lifelong inspirational and innovating art practices. As much
as we would have loved to launch the project in Australia first, it
is a crying shame that there is now no longer any Indigenous Media
Arts award categories or venues to do so.
 |
| superhighway across the sky project Tshirt design |
Sovereign Apocalypse: Do
you believe in “Aliens”? Do you think the concept of extra
terrestrial “Aliens” is misinterpreted?
Jenny Fraser: When
we watch mainstream alien invasion films we witness a great fear of
the “other” and the unknown, but my analysis of that is basically
just the ideology that perpetuates an age old human fear of
foreigners.
To
me, the concept of aliens just literally means outsiders. However, I
do often keep my eyes skyward. One night, when I was on Thursday
Island, I spotted a UFO, which seemed to be following my direction
along the beach... I had already started running, before I realised
that it was on is own trajectory, and later found out that it was
probably just a really low flying weather balloon, or small
satellite. Thankfully I haven't had a real UFO sighting, as just the
thought of it is really frightening, but I don't discount others
stories of their own first hand experiences. I enjoy hearing about
them, and my mind is blown by the level of detail, like spaceships
taking core samples from the rock walls of the Barron Gorge of
Kuranda, and the many reports of spaceships and coloured lights
flashing across the Northern Territory, and across the Asia Pacific
to places in Indonesia and New Zealand.
From
what I have heard, the concept of an alien just seems like some kind
of base level humans, who mainly only care about the land on this
planet, as a resource for gain and technology. Yet, even more
interesting to me is the governmental cover-ups and their
disassociation with ex-government employees who have come out and
made their sightings public. Why can't there be a public discussion
or awareness of peoples first hand experiences with other beings?
Sovereign Apocalypse: Have
you ever heard about the “returning” Boomerangs found in
Tutankhamens tomb and claims that it is from us mob?
Do
you believe international songlines exist?
Jenny Fraser: I
haven't heard about the boomerangs in Egypt, but I have heard stories
the other way - examples of an Egyptian presence here in Australia.
When I was younger, I remember there was a local story of a scarab
beetles being found at Bundadjarruga / Walshs Pyramid, a mountain at
Gordonvale here in Far North Queensland. Just this year, I was also
made aware of a similar story in Aotearoa through a Maori screenmaker
who explained that
an
anthropologist examined mummified remains found in a New Zealand cave
in the 1930s and believed the skull was ancient Egyptian, at least
2000 years old. A gold scarab was found in the same area...
This
kind of storytelling really sparks the imagination, but I think there
is some truth to them, as I'm sure ancient contact happened in many
ways. I also think that in ancient times gone by, the world was
definitely a more magical place, with sacred sites like mountains,
temples and bora rings being used for more direct and far reaching
communications with the presence of significant planetary alignments,
magnetic and other elemental forces. I am sure that the reasons why
we don't communicate the same way as it was done historically, is not
only because a lot of this kind of information and relating has been
lost through cultural dominance and the restriction of free passage,
but also because of the continental shift that happened, where we now
see evidence of the old world underwater.
 |
| Flying by Walshs Pyramid : photo by Jenny Fraser |
It
appears that communicating and honouring those international
connections or songlines, in that way are now broken, but maybe they
can be repaired, or we can be satisfied with the new developments, in
our societies or in outer space? As now we are aware of interstellar
songlines – in 2014 a singing comet was recorded by instruments of
the Rosetta mission that is run by the European Space Agency.
Sovereign Apocalypse: Do
you think our contact with “ancient civilisations” has been
denied in the colonial narrative?
Can
you tell us about the Australienation project?
What
do you hope to provoke from the audience when it is revealed in 30
years time?
Jenny Fraser: A
gold record featuring video and audio artworks will soon be launched
into outer space. Inspired
by and partly in response to the Voyager Golden Records, sent into
space in 1977 by NASA as a record of culture and science at that
time, the new international art/music group project titled Forever
Now
seeks to investigate our current historical moment. It re-imagines
this curatorial act as experimental, politically charged and for the
first time, places artists at the democratic centre of speaking on
humanity’s behalf.
It
was quite a challenging brief, to create a work that represents
humanity now - and which will be immortalised forever - in just one
minute. The
video that I contributed, titled Australienation
was shot on the Great Barrier Reef, which is currently under threat.
In 30 years time, when the Forever
Now
record may be accessed, we will probably have seen the death of our
World Wonder Reef, and, as scientists predict, our society will bear
witness to the death of sea life in general, all over the world.
 |
| still image from Australienation by Jenny Fraser |
Forever
Now
was launched on Sunday January 18 at the Odeon Theatre and broadcast
into outer space via Cape Canaveral, as part of the Mona FOMA Faux Mo
Festival in Hobart, and the artworks can also be viewed online at the
website: forevernow.me
What I
can hope for is that these new audiences will contemplate notions of
some binary oppositions: Alien/Native, Security/Insecurity,
Isolation/Belonging, Sympathy/Antipathy.
So I
also offered this quote by Gilbert Keith Chesterton “We
only know the last sad squires ride slowly towards the sea, And a new
people takes the land: and still it is not we.”
Sovereign Apocalypse: Superhighway
across the sky is awesome and we love that it is about connections
i.e. “methods
of communication are in some ways akin to the ancient notion of
Songlines.”
How did the collective conceive of this space and what is its
purpose?
Jenny Fraser: We
could say the sky is the limit.
I
had been trying to get up a web-based art project and tour for a long
time, and nine years later, I had finally managed to get some funding
for it. However, lead up time to enter it into festivals was only
short, and thankfully the artists were prepared to work fast on
realising their ideas in tune with the themes resonant with
Superhighway across the Sky. Christine Peacock brought the Brisbane
Commonwealth Games Protest photos and speeches to light from her
archives, Jason Davidson presented his documentation of chem trails
around Australia and Michelle Blakeney matched archival photographs
from Bombaderry Childrens Home near Nowra, with an audio track
featuring testimonial speeches from the now aging previous residents
at the Homes 100th
anniversary.
In
realising the project I was reminded of the film Koyaanisqatsi, named
after the Hopi Native American term meaning 'crazy
life, life in turmoil, life out of balance, life disintegrating, a
state of life that calls for another way of living'.
In the finale of the film, Hopi prophecies are chanted, including
this…. "Near
the day of Purification, there will be cobwebs spun back and forth in
the sky."
This could be referencing the world wide web, chem trails, or
satellite and plane passage, or all of the skyward traffic. Whatever
it is, I'm sure we are already living in these times, in the Fifth
World, and we need to be documenting and actively responding to our
current experiences and expectations. With social networking sites,
like facebook and instagram now more popular than ever, maybe we can
consider the new and instant methods of communication akin to the
ancient notion of Songlines, just the latest version.
 |
| Blackout Artists Jason Davidson, Jenny Fraser and Michelle Blakeney from Australia on tour, pictured with Native Canadian Dancer at the imagineNATIVE Film and Media Arts Festival Welcome in Toronto 2013 |
Links:
Sovereign Apocalypse: http://sovereignapocalypse.com
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