BRAD DARKSON

Artist Statement

waiting for kakirra

2023

 

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One person picks up a rock with the help of another and places it down in a circular
formation, a cool sensation up to the knee, waiting for the tide...

How did we get here? Rewind to the beginning.
Munaintyarlu – curl up that sea, on the crest of a wave. Creation is in the now.

Kakirra the Moon physically pulls the ocean upwards as she passes overhead in a
planetary collaboration. Saltwater moves against rock, slowly eroding minerals to form our
oceans. Yarta, the Earth, inhales. Oceans rise. An ancient fault line slowly folds a layer of
rock over an eternity. Glacial mudstone deposited from a time defined by cold, formed
through eons of immense pressure and elevated temperature. Exhale as oceans recede.

Fungi digest rocks to provide soil for plants. Bacteria provide oxygen to create
atmosphere. Each new multi-species community assembled in the process of collaborative world-making and survival.

Tending. Listening to Country. Kaurna bring kardla fire to yarta, collaborating with
grasslands, trees and other living things that overlap in these ecologies. Kakirra the Moon
passes overhead.

Kauwi water rises to the heat. The silence of young shoots underfoot. Freshwater drains
from deep rooted grasslands into a gently flowing stream, yawning to meet saltwater, and
new collaborations take place. Ceremony. Sing to the ocean. A spring nearby guides the
path of the stones into a circular formation. World-making continues.

Enter the economy > oeconomia > oikonomia > oikos (house) + nemein (manage). Ideas
of progress and looking to a better future for humanity. One full of promise and ease
powered by economic advancement and capital. Humans external to the environment.
Industrial progress. Move forward. Forget the present. Kakirra passes overhead.

Humanist and rationalist ideas that centre science and reason over the spiritual and the
non-human place emphasis on the individual – consciousness, agency. Our attention drifts further from the collaborative nature of survival in world-making. Survival becomes about the individual. The human species in a growth economy. Humans external to the
environment. A new identity of place formed through modernity and progress and
ownership of Country. Enormous rock structures take the place of small ones for the sake
of profit.

Ignore the present. Forget the past. The rocks remain unmoved. Waiting, as kakirra
passes overhead.

Today we ask ourselves what led us to the precipice of ecological catastrophe. Still we
push on. Forward. Disconnected from the present. Searching for technological
collaborations that might extend our survival in the wreckage of a global economy. A
virtual ghost of a time that was present and now past.

One person picks up a rock with the help of another and places it down in a circular
formation, a cool sensation up to the knee, waiting for kakirra.

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Artwork credit:

Animation artists from ACOLAB, Tarntanya (Adelaide)

Lead animator – Thom Dickson

Modelling – Nathan Hartman

Animation consultant – Arthur Ah Chee

Technical artists – Darcy Holmes and Tom Meakin

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Acknowledgements:

Community consultants - ngangki burka senior Kaurna woman Aunty Lynette Crocker, Aunty Merle Simpson and Uncle Jeffrey Newchurch.

 

Thanks also to Des Gubbin, Sue Specks and other Yankalilla locals including council staff members.

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