The Mermaids, or Aiden in Wonderland
2018 - Film & Video (Film & Video)
26:29 minutes
Karrabing Film Collective
The Mermaids, or Aiden in Wonderland by Karrabing Film Collective is a surreal exploration of Western toxic contamination, capitalism, and human and non-human life. Set in a land and seascape poisoned by capitalism where only Aboriginals can survive long periods outdoors, the film tells the story of a young Indigenous man, Aiden, taken away when he was just a baby to be a part of a medical experiment to save the white race. He is then released back into the world to his family. As he travels with his father and brother across the landscape he confronts two possible futures and pasts embodied by his own tale and the timely narratives of multinational chemical and extractive industries. The psychedelic and fragmented nature of the film reflects the insidious violence that corrupts the psychology of those who are structurally, economically, and politically displaced. As Aiden, a stranger to his own land, is reinserted into existence he becomes acquainted with territorial nature and folklore—mermaids, a bee, a cockatoo bring forth a pertinent inquiry of whose and which lives matter.
Karrabing Film Collective is an indigenous media group consisting of over 30 members, bringing together Aboriginal filmmakers from Australia’s Northern Territory. They approach filmmaking as a mode of self-organization and a means of investigating contemporary social conditions of inequality. Through the collective’s inventive artistic language, their work challenges historical and contemporary structures of settler power. Most of the members of the collective live in rural Indigenous communities in the outback of Australia with low or no income. The films represent their lives and through the process create bonds with their land while intervening in global images of Indigeneity. International screenings and publications of their work over the last few years have provided opportunities for some members of the collective to obtain passports, allowing them to develop local artistic languages and for audiences to understand new forms of collective Indigenous agency.
Colors:
Related works sharing similar palette
© » KADIST
Proyecciones Espacio Odeón (Bogotá, Colombia) y Museo La Tertulia (Cali, Colombia) ¿Cómo enfrentamos la incertidumbre de estos tiempos? ¿Puede el juego, los sueños, o incluso las alucinaciones ayudarnos a imaginar otras posibles trayectorias? ¿Qué tipo de prácticas nos permiten relacionarnos con los territorios que habitamos? Tomando como punto de partida el potencial de lo inquietante en medio de una amenaza invisible, Sigo esperando es una serie de proyecciones en las fachadas del Espacio Odeón (Bogotá) y del Museo La Tertulia (Cali)...
© » KADIST
Geof Oppenheimer
2011Designed as an installation timed spent is determined by the viewer, as with classical sculpture, Anthems is a piece that is in place, and in time, and an important genre of video within the collection...
© » ARTSY
8 Overlooked Women Old Masters Who Were Ahead of Their Time | Artsy Skip to Main Content Advertisement Art 8 Overlooked Women Old Masters Who Were Ahead of Their Time Annabel Keenan Dec 13, 2023 5:29PM Installation view of “Ahead of her Time: Pioneering Woman from the Renaissance to the Twentieth Century” at Robilant + Voena, 2023...
© » AFC
Explain Me with Andy Adams of FlakPhoto: From Idyllic Photos to The Surveillance State About AFC Board AFC Editions Donate Art F City Explain Me with Andy Adams of FlakPhoto: From Idyllic Photos to The Surveillance State by Paddy Johnson and William Powhida on November 2, 2020 Explain Me + Podcast Tweet Image by Andy Adams...
© » ARTS EQUATOR
"A Land Imagined" and The Ghosts We Forget | ArtsEquator Thinking and Talking about Arts and Culture in Southeast Asia Articles Photo courtesy of Akanga Film Asia & Philipp Aldrup Photography Photo courtesy of Akanga Film Asia & Philipp Aldrup Photography February 21, 2019 By Alfonse Chiu (1200 words, six-minute read) The three definitions of the word “ghost” from the Oxford dictionary are as follows: the first, “an apparition of a dead person which is believed to appear or become manifest to the living”; the second, “a slight trace or vestige of something”; and the third, “a faint secondary image caused by a fault in an optical system, duplicate signal transmission, etc.” In all three, presence is a suggestion of memory, amenable to corrections by means of a quick scrub of one’s spectacles...
© » KADIST
Yang Xinguang
2009Although seemingly unadorned at first glance, Yang Xinguang’s sculptural work Phenomena (2009) employs minimalist aesthetics as a means of gesturing towards the various commonalities and conflicts between civilization and the natural world...
© » KADIST
Edgardo Aragón
2007Efectos de familia (Family Effects, 2007–9) is a series of 13 videos that dramatize an array of abusive events derived from Edgardo Aragón’s family’s history—specifically its involvement with organized crime...
© » KADIST
Amapola Prada
2013In Amapola Prada’s work Movement, we see three spotlit, female bodies lying inert in a darkened room, alongside three dressed, standing figures holding long, wooden spoons...
© » KADIST
Jeff Burton
2013Negligee (2013) serves as an example of this tension, with its artful angle and play with shadow and light upon the sensual subject, rendering the image ambiguous...
© » ARTS EQUATOR
The top ArtsEquator articles of 2019 | ArtsEquator Thinking and Talking about Arts and Culture in Southeast Asia Articles Photo courtesy of Akanga Film Asia & Philipp Aldrup Photography December 31, 2019 Here’s a list of the top 10 ArtsEquator articles in 2019: Enter Stage Right: Tay Tong by Art sEquator “It is amazing how one’s identity is so associated with one’s job...
© » KADIST
Daniel Boyd
2017Daniel Boyd’s work WTEIA3 is part of a series of paintings that reference the stick charts used by indigenous communities on the Marshall Islands...