send help

During the 2019-20 bushfires, the telecommunications system failed on a massive scale.

People were left without mobile and internet coverage and, in some instances, radio transmission. Whole communities were cut off from the outside world, encircled by fire and unreachable in any way.

This failure not only highlighted the government's woefully inept NBN rollout, it also exposed the lack of any national emergency telecommunications plan. For, while the NBN, which is progressively replacing the copper wire system traditionally used for landline communications failed, those who still had landlines (and homes) found that their home phones still worked and were able to call for help.

This video work is a 'bush telegraph' call for help. Utilising footage taken on the dawn of another devastating fire a year earlier - the ancient Gondwanaland forests of Tasmania - in a remote coastal village on Tasmania's east coast, a faulty Telstra public phone flashes in the morning dark while the dawn chorus of birds, of sheep, of the ocean, squawks, bleats, roars.

The work draws on the notion of morse code and the 'incomprehensible' language of a long-othered nature to question the failure, frailty and vacuity of our supposed modern-day connectivity and our [in]ability to tune into, comprehend and act on what the environment has long been communicating.

‘send help’ is a 10-minute looped video. It was screened as part of Buzz Sonnet, an exhibition curated by Lianna Occhiuto at Create or Die Gallery, Marrickville, in March 2020.