EXPERIMENTA UTOPIA NOW INTERNATIONAL BIENNIAL OF MEDIA ART
Opening Thursday, 18 February 2010, 6pm Melbourne, Australia
Blindside Gallery 37 Swanston Street

What narratives can be read in a hypsographic land formation? Hypsography is simply the topographical form of the Earth above mean sea level. In the case of the South Pacific republic of Nauru, the world’s smallest island nation at 24km2, located in one of the most remote locations on the planet, there are recognizable patterns on its surface that are telling of historical scripts that can be tracked through its geological layers. Most striking is the skeletal geological covering of towering limestone pinnacles that makes up ninety percent of the island’s surface. It is the landscape of erasure, the residue of land matter which was once abundantly covered in phosphate that was the base for a lush tropical landscape, now it is almost completely stripped. The zoomed out vista from the aerial approach would deem Nauru by geographical location and form as a utopia or “no place”.

Annie K. Kwon

Nauru Hypso from AK Kwonix on Vimeo.