As the world comes together to end fossil fuels these massive remnants of industry sit like scars on the earth. Constant reminders of who we once were. What do we do with these dinosaurs? Are they melted down and recast as new cities, are they reoccupied and squatted on, or left to decay and return to the ground from which they came? This story follows the communities that return to the land from which they were once removed and take back these machines, to weave them into their new lives on Country.
South Australia is home to some of the largest excavations on earth: holes in the ground so large that they generate their own weather systems, chasms cut out of sacred ground, reformed earth that has shipped precious Country across the world boat by boat. What will become of these scars and how can the communities that belong to this land reassert their sovereignty?
Out on the vast seas, giant cities have been sucking oil from beneath the ocean floor and poisoning the waters. When the tap is turned off, do we let them rust into the sea, drag them back to shore or create new island nations?
Gas plumes light up the skies over stolen land. Tangled webs of pipelines, valves and reservoirs that could be dismantled, repurposed or burnt to the ground. The sky has been colonised just as the land has. In the 1950s, the South Australian ground shook with the nuclear tests of the British Empire, today the coastline is home to a multi-billion-dollar space industry launching satellites of the techno-industrial complex into the stars.
Beginning 50,000 years ago, After the End tells the story of Australia, from the earliest first nations communities, through colonisation and the history of extraction to a near future when fossil fuels are banned and stolen lands are returned. From the shadows of industry communities return to reassert their sovereignty and reimagine the massive scars left behind. New island communities are formed above the remains of oil rigs sunken as artificial reefs and a sovereign satellite network is launched for a new Indigenous space industry built on the concrete pads of aging gas plants.
An infrastructural imaginary
Cyberpunk imagined the messy subcultures of the virtual, Solarpunk projects the aspiring communities of Ecotech. The aesthetic movements of science fiction have always been productive in engaging a wider public in visions of what the future could be. In this moment we need to define a new aesthetic language for a future of radical post-colonial climate remediation. After the End is an artefact of what we could call Planetary Punk, Infra Punk or Geo Punk, a world that embraces the ideological and cultural consequences of massive infrastructural change, speculative geoengineering and planetary-scaled adaptation.
Remnants of extraction
Australia is described as the quarry of the world. Its landscapes are home to the largest and most significant infrastructures of extraction ever produced. Australia’s economy is defined by fossil fuel projects and extractive economies to the extent that any end to our reliance on these resources will require a total reimagining of how we live. After the End imagines just that, what are the new narratives that emerge when we decide to completely end fossil fuel production. How will these enormous infrastructures be repurposed or dismantled, how will we reoccupy these landscapes once industry has left.
Reclaiming Country
After the End was filmed and takes place on Ngarrindjeri, Narungga, Kaurna and Noongar woman Natasha Wanganeen’s Country in South Australia. This includes the Yorke Peninsula, and surrounding areas, encompassing the Olympic Dam mine, the Cooper Basin, and the Maralinga / Woomera nuclear test sites. The Olympic Dam mine is the largest single deposit of uranium in the world, and the fourth largest copper deposit; the Cooper Basin has Australia’s most important oil and gas deposits; and the UK conducted seven nuclear tests at Maralinga / Woomera from 1956 to 1963. This colonial and environmental destruction is referenced in After the End, with Wanganeen’s poetic narrative and Young’s visuals envisioning First Peoples reclaiming Country and the infrastructure of extraction.
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Collection
In ACMI's collection
On display until
27 April 2025
ACMI: Gallery 4
Credits
Collection metadata
ACMI Identifier
Z000209
Subject category
Digital Art
Curatorial section
The Future & Other Fictions → After the End → Liam Young & Natasha Wanganeen
Object Types
Moving image file/Digital