ACMI + Melbourne Festival present
Collisions: Lynette Wallworth
Work Duration: 18 minutes
Limited to 2 tickets per booking. Booking is optional but guarantees your place. Please arrive 10 minutes before the booked time or your spot may be given away.
Lynette Wallworth’s Collisions is a stunning VR experience that invites audiences on a journey to the land of Indigenous elder, Nyarri Nyarri Morgan and the Martu tribe in the remote Western Australian desert. In a thought-provoking, immersive experience, Nyarri shares his story of the dramatic collision between his traditional world view and his experience of nuclear testing in the South Australian desert.
Collisions was developed as a result of the inaugural Sundance New Frontier-Jaunt VR Residency.
“Collisions is a powerful parable for our country. Nyarri Morgan's important story has been hidden till now so I am grateful that it will be showcased for three months at ACMI allowing many to contemplate its message.”
Lynette Wallworth, Nyarri Nyarri Morgan and Curtis Taylor In Conversation
ABOUT NYARRI NYARRI MORGAN
"Ngaa-nga jarkulparna kartinpa yulubidyi, Jarmukurnu Yaparlyikurnu mirda kujtu ngaryukuju parlparryikujanumpa, yuwa palya.
This story I carry is until the end, from our Grandfathers and Grandmothers; not just my story alone, for everyone, thank you."
Collisions tells the story of Aboriginal elder Nyarri Nyarri Morgan. A Martu man from the remote Pilbara desert in Western Australia, he lived his early life with no knowledge or contact with western culture. His world is all he knew.
Nyarri’s first contact with Western culture came in the 1950s via a dramatic collision between his traditional world view and the cutting edge of Western science and technology. Reflecting on the event, in this most magical of immersive experiences, Nyarri offers viewers his experience of the impact of destructive technology and the Martu perspective on caring for the planet for future generations.
Nyarri is an elder who has seen his community through dramatic changes, a speaker of seven western desert languages, an artist whose work has been exhibited across the world and a man whose incredible story is now being shared in VR.
"Nyarri has waited a very long time to tell his extraordinary story."
PRODUCTION NOTES
"We've used the newest technology to talk about something that is ancient in this country"
INCEPTION
"I first heard of Nyarri’s story four years ago on a hunting trip with the Martu women painters in the Western Desert. Hearing that I had been to Maralinga, where Britain tested atomic bombs in the 1950s, Nyarri’s wife Nola turned to me at the campfire with what felt like an instruction…"You have to talk to Nyarri."
A year later I did just that and I heard a short powerful parable that Nyarri had waited almost his entire life to share. So this work was born, as a thought or an imagining. I hadn’t yet experienced Virtual Reality and I was waiting to decide the form that would best suit this work. When I experienced my first VR film I knew how to make Nyarri’s story exist again.
I love new technology. I love the moment when the viewer experiences a new sensation for the first time. I know that moment gets seared into memory. I also believe in the power of story to reshape us collectively. I think the two belong together.
Nyarri’s world is only available to me through being invited, through this work that invitation is extended to you. The powerful sense of presence of VR makes everything personal. Nyarri knows who it is he is speaking to. He is speaking to you.
So this work is something of a gift sent from a private world. It contains an old story, held close till now. It is a technological message in a bottle sent out to a world that could enact a different future. It's a work that tries to do the hardest of things- to create a bridge for two cultures in our shared homeland acknowledging our onward stewardship of this wonderful, wounded, resilient country."
Lynette Wallworth
