KAROO DISCLOSURE. A collaborative art installation investigating fracking at Iziko Natural History Museum featuring Deborah Weber, Damien Schumann, Elgin Rust, Gina Waldman, Margaret Stone, Maxim Starcke, Lisa Bauer, Michelle Liao, Tom Glenn, Peet van Heerden, Hendrik Dudumashe and Paula Kingwill until November 15. LUCINDA JOLLY reviews.
“FEW MEN are willing to brave the disapproval of their fellows, the censure of their colleagues, and the wrath of their society. Moral courage is a rarer commodity than bravery in battle or great intelligence. Yet it is the one essential, vital quality for those who seek to change a world which yields most painfully to change,” said Robert F. Kennedy in 1966.
The quote is potently apt both in terms of South Africa’s secrecy bill and its cunning control through the punishment of the whistle blower– rather than the committer of the crime. In terms of the exhibition Karoo Disclosure it also pertains to the non-disclosure agreements that govern so much of our lives, of which many of us are unaware. In particular around the debate on the pros and cons of fracking.
Interestingly, as in the case of non-disclosure or confidential information, even your librarian is obligated to keep information about the books you read confidential.
The very word fracking, short for hydraulic fracturing, has the same ring as a certain expletive. The process involves “digging wells up to 4km deep, then pumping in large amounts of water mixed with chemicals under high pressure to crack or fracture the shale rock and release the gas”. Implicit in the term is the shattering or rupturing with wide ranging implications for the environment, communities and health.
This exhibition “explores notions of heritage, culture, ownership and legitimacy in the context of external economic and political drivers that threaten to change the landscape and the lives of communities in unforeseen ways”. It opened with a discussion on fracking. The panel included a wide range of participants from fine art professors and theorists to energy experts, anthropologists and geologists.
The question that fracking posits was succinctly asked by Saliem Fakir, energy scientist at WWF. He wrote “The question we have to ask is; do we really need fracking and even if we frack, is there a good relation between energy security, access and jobs?”
Appropriate to one of the many issues that plague fracking is non- disclosure. You’ll find this exhibition in a dark, dead end corridor against a background of melancholic other-worldly pips and clicks of a whale soundtrack and the drills of renovation
The focus of Karoo Disclosure is a video with supporting elements of photographic stills from the video, props and various displays. Commenting on environmental treasures that fracking will disrupt the displays mimic the museums formal ones. From pink satin ribbons used to close legal files hang creatures and implements all endemic to the Karoo – the skeleton of a leopard frog, an angulate tortoise shell, grooved stones, petrified wood, a jackal skull, beautifully designed crafted stone -age tools. Their literal suspension suggests a metaphorical hiatus or limbo in the face of fracking.
Selected for the Karoo Indy Film Festival and shown at That Art Fair, the video is the focal point of the exhibition. The use of a split screen is a rather obvious underlining of the content – a battle between good and evil in classic fairytale style illustrating fracking as a contemporary horror story.
Instead of a gloomy European gothic castle the site for this battle is the vast 250 000 year old plains of the Karoo. It is there that the wicked metallic sorcerer of fracking and the good black sorcerer of the earth do battle. Both sorcerers are acted by the same actress suggesting perhaps the polarities of good and evil that occupy different sides of the same coin – or a budget constraint. You’ll see the good sorcerer half way up a windmill hissing like a demented cat defending her turf and the evil one, who would have given Maleficent a run for her money with her insane cackling.
What could have been a wonderful Mad Max-meets- Africa Burn moment interestingly choreographed, beautifully styled with cool props, becomes a kitsch boere baroque version of Steven Cohen goes to Pretoria without his stylist. The Louise Bourgeois-inspired spider made from old car parts and machinery, which is in the video is unfortunately nowhere to be found in the exhibition, stands apart. And yet unlike the often dense stodginess of pre-Banting academic papers, the video does what a beer ad suggests a particular beer is able to do. It goes places other beers can’t. Substitute academic paper for beer in this case. The storyline is easy to get and effective on a basic emotional level.
The highlight was the little tree bower. Easily mistaken for a genuine museum diorama the backlit little display is made from two cable tied branches holding bits of witchery; cuttings of hair and ribbons and such like under the arc of a bird’s wing.
The importance of this exhibition lies in the issues and consciousness it raises around fracking. But possibly more important is the issue of non- disclosure. In this case used by petroleum companies and government.
While this little exhibition attempts to raise awareness and open debate, it can only be partial. As anthropology Professor Lesley Green points out, “that the use of non-disclosure agreements in the USA and secrecy clauses mean that the game is lost before it’s begun, since democratic debate is skewed”.
For there can be no real debate without full disclosure and this cannot happen while there is a collusion between the state and oil companies that have heavily vested interests in keeping the public ignorant. Fracking is cited by those who stand to gain as developing the economy of the Karoo. This is disputed. And studies by CANSA (Cancer South Africa) show that of the 750 chemicals involved in the fracking process, 150 are carcinogenic.
I play the devil’s advocate with Green by suggesting that according to the Yale Climate Condition web site, water and shale gas occur at different levels so that contamination can be avoided or that earthquakes sustained during fracking are not any higher than the percent of natural earthquakes. She is quick to point out the following; concrete can crack, allowing toxic waste to contaminate the water. And even if the percentage of earthquakes generated by the process were only marginally higher than natural occurrences – which it is not- why encourage earthquakes at all?
As an exhibition Karoo Disclosure may not hit the high notes but it must be commended for being full of heart and deep concern. As Green writes in an academic paper,” These are risky times indeed, without known gods of reason”.
l Want to make a difference? Check out these organisations Avaaz, Greenpeace and 350.org