Foreward Wondering who the real cannibals are: 11 July — 30 August 08 Biography Tim Silver Tim Silver’s The Tuvaluan Project The Tuvaluan Project

The low-lying islands of Tuvalu are a watery Let’s start with a conclusion: Tim Silver’s ostensible moral concerning the savagery inher- photographed and photograph it, or ‘the chance be Silver’s point. The Tuvaluan Project is Tim Silver is a Sydney-based artist working barometer for rising sea levels resulting from The Tuvaluan Project is an exercise in ent in modern civilisation, is its problematising to go and see what has already been made trite’, not so much a process of mediation, but of across media, through photography, video, global warming. Subject of international curiosity critical exploitation. of the documentary form, the very capacity of as Guy Debord so famously put it.3 remediation, of mediating that which has already sculpture and ephemeral installation, his work and some compassion, the islands form an How is such a thing possible? How can reproductive media, in this case film itself, to Silver, on the other hand, filters the culture, been mediated.4 Cannibal Holocaust offers reflects and embodies the impermanence and armature for Tim Silver’s The Tuvaluan Project. one exploit, with all the connotations of uneven convey objective truth. It then creates a further landscape, people and ecological fragility of a reflection on the exploitative possibilities of instability of the world in which we live, providing Silver plays with a range of stereotypical power relations that the word throws up, and do problematic by deploying this sophisticated Tuvalu through an alternative to these standard reproductive technology that it then goes on to a poetic perspective on contemporary anxieties. references to consumption, quite literally from it critically? Perhaps a more precise descriptor realisation, innovatively played out through photojournalistic representations. He reflects exploit, but in such a way that this exploitation is His work is concerned with the idea of entropy; cannibalism to the ubiquity of photography— for Silver’s undertaking would be ‘reflexive found, first-person footage of a documentary on his role as a privileged observer by deploying, undercut by the validity of its own criticism—in the theory that all forms and systems are in a from documentary through to tourist brochures. exploitation’, but the syllabic doubling, especially crew faking and ultimately provoking acts of perhaps surprisingly, that most exploitative of this sense the film can be said to cannibalise constant state of decay/change. This idea Silver casts the island, along with himself and when spoken aloud—‘-ex- ex-’ —is a little savagery from a primitive tribe, to demonstrate cinematic trope systems, the cannibal cycle. His itself. Likewise, Silver uses an acknowledgment permeates both his objects and installations, local non-actors who inhabit fictional characters, unwieldy. The other alternative, ‘self-critical just how atrocious and exploitative cinema, and process was appropriately cinematic, scouting of the power relations implicit in the process of themselves captured in this process of the sense of which is left up to the viewer to exploitation’, has an oddly psychoanalytic tone by association all forms of representation, can locations, sourcing ‘actors’ and drawing up a photographic representation and reproduction decomposition through photo-narratives. construct. With little intervention on the island, to it, and an altogether unhelpful one at that. be.2 It is at once a critique of representation and storyboard to be executed photographically. as the point of departure for a body of work Silver holds a Master of Fine Arts and a such as wardrobe or location, Silver stages Perhaps it is better, then, to look more deeply commercialised violence, and the worst example This generic narrative, apparently involving the utilising that very process. This is why the work Bachelor of Visual Arts with first class honours, what is at hand, with reference to the edifice of at the history of exploitation in reproductive of it, a double reflexivity that makes the film’s destabilising arrival of a stranger in paradise, can be considered critical and exploitative he has exhibited across Australia, and also existing cliché and with the environmental crisis media, particularly as one of its moments forms brutality all the more compelling. For Silver, having was, for the artist, purely structural; in public at once, or more appropriately, critically participated in exhibitions in Belgrade, Serbia, lurking in the distance. the operative model for The Tuvaluan Project. already alluded to the closely related genre of presentation, the images are arranged out of exploitative, thoroughly aware of its place in the Christchurch, New Zealand and Kuala Lumpur, Reuben Keehan’s splendid essay Wondering The exemplary moment of critical exploitation, Italian zombie cinema with his earlier work Killing chronological order. This nod to the utilitarian, representation of place. In the spirit of the heavy- Malaysia. In 2005, 2006 and 2007 he was who the real cannibals are: Tim Silver’s The as it pertains to Silver’s project and, I would Me Softly, this discursive complexity, along with often incoherent plot developments in Italian handed morality of the cannibal cycle, Silver nominated one of Australia’s 50 most collectible Tuvaluan Project provides a context for Silver’s argue, to cinematic exploitation in general, is the quirks of cannibal cycle as a whole, would horror is reflected in the nature of the images offers himself as the cannibal, both in the sole artists in Australian Art Collector, and in 2002 reference to Italian Cannibal Cycle films and the highly specific sub-genre of Italian horror serve as the critical lens for the cultural encounter themselves, as Silver apes the found footage ‘bloody’ image that makes it into The Tuvaluan was included in MCA’s Primavera. His work is addresses photography’s alliance between cinema known as the ‘cannibal cycle’, and its enacted in The Tuvaluan Project. and shamelessly copied imagery of cannibal Project, and in the very methodology of his held in the collections of the Art Gallery of New documentation and exploitation. most extraordinary work, Ruggero Deodato’s The object of Silver’s exploitation is the cycle films with a dizzying array of appropriations work’s self-cannibalising critical exploitation. South Wales, Museum of Contemporary Art, Catalogues, like tides deliver important Cannibal Holocaust (1980). Produced between titular Pacific nation of Tuvalu. A former British from Western culture. These are drawn, as University of Queensland Art Gallery and private evidence of artist’s work, images and critical the mid-1970s and early 1980s as discrete colony, Tuvalu is made up of no more than a might be expected, from certain scenes within Reuben Keehan collections both nationally and internationally. texts that exist long after the exhibition. This entities,1 these films are nonetheless unified handful of reefs and atolls, whose highest point the cycle itself, but equally from a wide variety Later this year Silver will undertake a residency catalogue has been generously supported by a complex and largely unintentional inter- is a mere two metres above sea level. Such a of sources, referencing other cinematic genres, at Tokyo Wonder Site, engaging with Japanese by the Besen Family Foundation. I thank the textuality, sharing themes, imagery, plot lines, low elevation has made Tuvalu exceptionally touristic snapshots, commercial advertising artists in preparation for a major exhibition in Foundation for enabling The Tuvaluan Project casts, crew, sets, soundtracks, footage and in vulnerable to global warming, with frequent and recent art history. Importantly, even the Tokyo, September 2008, which will culminate to persist beyond its exhibition at Centre for some cases even entire scenes. Drawing on the storms and the slightest change in water standard photojournalistic framing of Tuvalu in a group show at Artspace in March 2009. Contemporary Photography. dynamics and techniques of ‘Mondo’ shocku- levels threatening to render the country un- is represented in one photograph of a storm- 1There is some contention Following that Silver will be completing an mentaries of the mid-1960s, the cannibal cycle inhabitable. Journalistic representations of ravaged beach. among genre aficionados as to Asialink residency in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia whether Umberto Lenzi’s Man Naomi Cass is accordingly characterised by its po-faced Tuvalu, particularly through photography and The crucial difference between The Tuvaluan from Deep River (1972) or for four months. Director moralising, brutal and voyeuristic depiction of television, have tended to focus on this aspect Project and the cannibal cycle is one of tone. Deodato’s Jungle Holocaust Centre for Contemporary Photography violence, frequent scenes of graphic animal of the country, figuring storm damage and Where most Italian cannibal films are drenched (1977) constitutes the first entry in the cycle. In any case, after cruelty, and stereotyping of non-European flooding alongside more traditional idyllic island in sleaze, or in the case of Cannibal Holocaust, Jungle Holocaust, the films came Tim Silver received support from the Australia people that was exoticising at best and, at worst, paradise imagery as key registers for the sinking genuinely, transgressively disturbing, Silver’s thick and fast. Council to travel to Tuvalu to achieve this exhibition. 2 Deodato’s imagery predictably downright racist. In keeping with much Italian islands in the Western cultural imagination. work has an engaging campness. This emerges found its way into a number of horror of the period, narrative is treated either as Whatever the truth of the images, or the nobility from the fun the local Tuvaluan non-actors seem subsequent entries within the of the intentions of those who produce and cycle, most notably Lenzi’s a device for stringing together a series of grisly to be having hamming up their roles, but more Cannibal Ferox (1981), as well set pieces, or jettisoned altogether, while found distribute them—the place is sinking, after importantly in the sense of the amusement as, somewhat less predictably, The artist would like to thank the people of footage and appropriated imagery abound. If all—they nevertheless function as tropes in a produced in the process of recognising outside it, as in Oliver Stone’s Tuvalu who worked on and supported this project. Platoon (1986). But it was the you handle that sort of thing (and there is a lot to lexicon of cultural mediation, reproductions parodied cultural objects. Camp, of course, faux-verité innovation and found Thanks also to the Tuvaluan Red Cross and the handle), they are also wonderfully entertaining. that program a sense of place in a privileged relies for its effect on a competent reading footage mythology that would Tuvaluan Family Health Association. Additional prove most enduring and Standing head and shoulders above the rest viewing audience. Without travelling to Tuvalu, subject, viewers literate in the historical meaning lucrative in popular cinema, thanks to Jamie North, Carol Farbotko, of the cycle is Cannibal Holocaust, transcend- such representations are the only way to of any symbols being appropriated. It is highly exploited without acknowledge- Gallery Hours : Clare Milledge, Ben Smith, Reuben Keehan, ing its generic limitations—though these remain understand it; even if we do make the trip, our doubtful that Silver’s jibe at photographic ment in The Blair Witch Project Sandyprints, FX Framing and all at CCP. (1999), and with a tacit nod in the Wed — Sat 11am— 6pm apparent—through a rare mixture of cinematic perception operates in relation to those prior tableaux in a reconstruction of Tracey Moffatt’s more recent Cloverfield (2008). invention, touches of quality (particularly in representations. Or else representations frame Something More, for example, would make as 3 Guy Debord, The Society of 404 George Street All works: the Spectacle, trans. Donald Fitzroy Victoria 3065 Australia Tim Silver Untitled the areas of cinematography and soundtrack), the actual experience of place, substituting for much sense to the Tuvaluan actors involved as it Nicholson-Smith, Centre for Contemporary Photography is supported by the Victorian Government through Arts Victoria and is (The Tuvaluan Project) 2007 disturbingly realistic violence, and a complex, it as in that strangely performative tolerance would to an audience in an Australian gallery. Zone Books, 1994, p. 120. Telephone: +613 9417 1549 assisted by the Australian Government through the Australia Council, its arts funding and advisory body. Centre type C photograph 4 My thanks to Sydney-based for Contemporary Photography is supported by the Visual Arts and Craft Strategy, an initiative of the Australian, Email: [email protected] state and territory governments. CCP is a member of CAOs Contemporary Arts Organisations of Australia. 58.8 x 44.4cm almost irresolvable, self-questioning. The film’s of cliché that seems to accompany tourism, But this uneven reception of the language theorist and art historian Thomas All photographs: Jamie North brilliant central conceit, quite aside from its the tendency to visit what has already been of representation seems in many ways to J. Berghuis for this insight. Web: www.ccp.org.au ISBN 978-0-9804454-2-8