Unbound Collective at the TarraWarra Biennial 2023

Unbound Collective performed at the opening weekend of TarraWarra Biennial 2023: ua usiusi faʻavaʻasavili, curated by Dr Léuli Eshrāghi.

PERFORMANCE by The Unbound Collective with Brooke Wandin (Wurundjeri)

From Kaurna Yarta we are Mirning, Narungga, Yankunytjatjara, Yidinji Mbarbram and we are honoured to accept this invitation to Wurundjeri Country. We come bearing witness to the poisoning of the precious mangrove forests and waterways across our many countries. We carry fresh waters gifted from Kaurna Elders and community to you. We carry feathers and seagrass and debris on netted skirts, and we rise with ocean tides, on connecting tributaries, and pulled by the moon. We gift sovereign love poems through embodied acts of resistance and we breathe with you. Hear us call out … We remember. We know you as our body, essential to life-giving life, with every fourth breath you give. Like your salt of the earth we rise, our poised-balance refusal to disappear.

Video: James Wright NON Studio

*****

breath

your spongy finger-like aerial roots creep through mud in search of low tide
you rise-up with the spring moon
stretch toward light
from fine-laced bark shedding skin
to seagrass meadow nurturing sea life
you softly bubble and creak and swallow
you exhale through debris
and every fourth breath you give

your vertical lungs sustain this fine-balanced estuary
you aerate the shallows
cleanse marsh and swamp and fish-nursery
your fragile magnificence churns and rests where our waters meet
and every fourth breath you give

waterlogged sediment seeps and drains from vein to outlet to river and sea
your mouth wide-open filters the tide
we savour your pungent nutrient-rich sweet decay
we taste together to settle unsettle
survive and thrive
with every fourth breath you give

salt

salt-mines maintain complex life
from beach to mudflat to lagoon back to sea
somehow you survive this mineral-harvest-carving
you move with seasons
flush feed and adapt from dry and low
to wet and high to dry again
concentrations of micro-life thrive
while migratory birds feed and rest and nest and glide
their long-haul flights from Siberia and Japan still rhythm and pulse
rotate with stars and moon and tide

pastel-pink waters glisten bright
evaporate to fade with the sun
giant pyramid salt mounds grow a vast lucrative backdrop of white-gold
and crystal peaks frame your perfect briny-life

face west across waters
in front of the sun
see a distant conveyor-belt of factory skylines silhouetted
transforming from salt to soda-ash
to extract and smelt
this magic invisible ingredient
necessary to our everyday
from cakes to concrete to soap to glass
industry rumbles and grinds-on in the background
and every fourth breath you still give

Dead-Zone

watch this crime scene unfold in slow motion
these are our Badlands
a spectral reminder in hot dangerous times that capitalism kills
decommissioned salt-mine gypsum-ponds fissure and rot
porcelain-lined and cracked
housing development plans are lodged as giant holdings of acidic-brine leak toxic-white death
a quiet gentle seep and under the radar
fully drained and on the move without penalty
to poison and kill our body

brittle and stressed you seek oxygen and tidal reprieve
they say 196 hectares impacted dead
but you are beyond 4000 hectares violated
you are our lungs and we will never be the same
no nutrient-rich movement on skin and tongue
you gasp and we strain toward your silence
no bird-song
no cool breeze
no suctioning sweet-mud
this is our unsettled unsettling
we cry with you
in disbelief we ache with you
to breathe

 knowing

our mind rests with midden-sites and blue whale bones
with sandy ridges and chenier plains
we find memories of feasting
of old ways interrupted
and we learn from Elders who know how to stay awake in this land of sleep

when your ever-present last-breath black-life exhales
we recognise the choke
we open-up to receive
to churn and disrupt and collectively remember
we watch listen and deep-dive-in
then like your salt of the earth we rise
our poised-balance refusal
to disappear

your spongy finger-like aerial roots are slow to heal
your tidal marshlands labour hard to ebb and flow
to nurture and release
you try to lure fish and crabs and snails into creeks at high tide and we know
this ocean life will spawn from you
seagrass beds will blanket you
we will rest on your banks and love you
reeds will dry-soak-split-twist from you
make our nets to fish from you
the world will know you as our body
essential to life-giving life
with every fourth breath you give.

*****

We call to our ancestors
We call to ancestors on Wurundjeri country
We honour you
We honour with country

From Kaurna Yarta – we are Mirning
We are Yidinji Mbarbram
We are Narungga
We are Yankunytjatjara

and we accept your invitation to Wurundjeri Country.

We call to all Indigenous peoples, protectors of sacred water and lands, from all places of the world.
We call to our intellectual warriors, our writers, our poets, our artists, our activists, our storytellers.
We call to our elders, our leaders, and our children.

In a place that Uncle Lewis Yerloburka O’Brien calls Yarta Puulti, the place of grief, and purdu pari (former river banks), the river once curled through the mangroves where Tjilbruke still lives.
This place of beginnings where fresh-water springs give forth to wetlands is where the trees carry the marks of the time before; trees marked during the long lawful time.
This place has old stories that make you want to rest your head and listen.
We come bearing witness to the poisoning of the precious mangrove forests and waterways across our many countries.
This is our body, awash and afloat, water-bearing and bearing-witness to poison and ignorance and greed.
We are river and sediment, storied and seeping an exchange of love and dangerous ideas.
This is a slow mapping of decolonial flows that soak vital inlets and outlets, guiding currents to vast oceans of kinship deep.

This is our body as mangrove as skin and lung; a fragile filtering of lateral roots marked beyond thousands of years to reach toward skies and breathe free through tides of saturated resistance.
We carry fresh waters gifted from Kaurna Elders and community to you.
We carry feathers and seagrass and debris on netted skirts, and we rise with ocean tides, on connecting tributaries, and pulled by the moon.
We gift sovereign love poems through embodied acts of resistance, and we breathe with you.
Hear us call out…. We remember. We know you as our body, essential to life-giving life, with every fourth breath you give.
Hear us call out…. Like your salt of the earth we rise, our poised-balance refusal to disappear.
Hear us call out…. Like your salt of the earth we rise, our poised-balance refusal to disappear.
Hear us call out…. Like your salt of the earth we rise, our poised-balance refusal to disappear.

*****

Unbound Collective:

Ali Gumillya Baker (Mirning), Faye Rosas Blanch (Mbararam, Yidinyji), Natalie Harkin (Narungga), Simone Ulalka Tur (Yankunytjatjara)

Brooke Wandin:

Brooke Wandin is a Wurundjeri educator, language worker and artist. Brooke has developed and facilitated a range of cultural educational programs, providing Wurundjeri cultural and historical education for pre-school to tertiary students. She is also one of the Directors of Wandoon Estate Aboriginal Corporation and is the current Indigenous Victorian Aboriginal Cultural Research Fellow at the State Library of Victoria where she is examining materials relating to Woiwurrung language to assist in the development of a Woiwurrung language database.

The TarraWarra Biennial, showing 1 April–16 July 2023, features newly commissioned works by 15 artists/artist groups focused on the interconnectedness of the peoples of Australia, Asia and the Great Ocean.