The Colony cares for everyone

HD Video with sound, 9:06, 2023

The Colony cares for everyone is a site-specific installation created as part of my PhD exhibition. I infested the RMIT Chancellery with video and photographic works featuring the termites of my hometown on Larrakia Land (NT), rooted in narratives of resistance and interspecies care.

Featuring a termite colony consuming what I term ‘settler fanfiction’ books: literature that celebrates the history of colonialism and the extractive industries that underpin it. My connection with this termite colony began on Larrakia/Wulna land, where I grew up. Termites were eating my late father’s shed, and I began to feed them his books, eventually expanding their diet to include both current and historical settler fanfiction, and related books.

I aim to reimagine the values in our settler fanfiction by dwelling on how termites deconstruct and transform, envisioning a future unraveling of Eurocentric and anthropocentric knowledge systems, rooted in resistance and interspecies care, revealing the gaps in our understanding.

RMIT repurposed the Former Magistrates’ Courtroom 3 as the chancellery boardroom. On the wall hangs the royal coat of arms of the British monarchy, with its motto Dieu et mon droit, “God and my right”. It claims that the monarch has a divine right to rule this Land. I’ve filled the room with video works soundtracked by termites feeding on books, recorded by me and shaped by sound designer Bridget Chappell. I imagine the termites quietly undermining the foundations of a building designed to represent “the pride of the British justice system”. I placed contact microphones inside a nest of books, so you can hear the workers’ mandibles cutting through paper and the soldiers tapping their heads in a protective rhythm.

RMIT’s property portfolio spans roughly 6 per cent of the land in Narrm’s CBD. RMIT also partners with 9 of the 20 largest weapons companies, including BAE Systems, which is the largest manufacturer of termite poison globally. Working in this space I consider the neoliberal university and the stories of technological utopia it tells about itself. Most of these stories fall apart with very little chewing. How might we reimagine them?