Christian Vium

THE WAKE Re-enacting the Spencer & Gillen photographic archive In May and June 2014, I was working in Central Australia, trying to creatively re-enact elements of the renowned photographic work of anthropologists and photographers Frank Gillen and Baldwin Spencer, who produced one of the most influential records of aboriginal life over a period of 40 years between 1875 and 1912. I wanted to revisit their cardinal work, and use it as a point of departure for a contemporary dialogue about how we see and represent ‘the Other’. I went into the field with a selection of photographs, which I used as the basis for extended photo elicitation with descendants of those people engaged by Spencer and Gillen. Together with inhabitants of the central desert, I wanted to re-enact the old images creatively in the places where they were originally made. I wanted to invite those portrayed to bring their points of view and ideas into the process. One of the main themes that grew out of the archive work and subsequent photo elicitation was that of mourning, in particular as expressed in what is commonly referred to by Aboriginal people as ‘sorry business’. Mourning, I came to understand, was a particularly apt metaphor for the deplorable life conditions for Aboriginals in Australia today. On average, their life expectancy is 20 years lower than that of their fellow Australians. Hence, rituals and practices surrounding death are abundant and woven into the fabric of everyday life to an extraordinary extent in Aboriginal Australia. My main ambition was not simply to produce ‘good images’ but to employ photography as a collaborative and improvisational practice for opening up dialogue and generate qualitative knowledge in the junction between the archive, the field, my interlocutors and I. I wanted to create a space within which the people in front of the camera were invited to perform themselves in dialogue with the past representations. ‘The Wake’ is part of FOAM Talents 2015.