INFRACTIONS is a feature length film that platforms important First Nation voices between Yallarm (Gladstone, Queensland)—where unconventional gas was first approved in Australia—and current struggles against shale gas fracking that threatens 51 per cent of the Northern Territory. The film is the final work of The Gas Imaginary, 2013–20, a project by Gladstone-born settler artist, writer and curator Rachel O’Reilly that has used poetry, drawing, moving image and lecture formats to explain the legal, aesthetic and technical conceits of ‘unconventional’ gas, in ongoing dialogue with Gooreng Gooreng elders and women environmental activists.

INFRACTIONS was made in the wake of the 2018 NT Scientific Inquiry into hydraulic fracturing (fracking) and before gas figured as a national solution to pandemic economics. Artists and community workers in INFRACTIONS speak up for songlines and refuse ‘northern development’ geographies and Professor Irene Watson, Pro Vice Chancellor Aboriginal Leadership and Strategy at the University of South Australia, explains the continuing entanglement of Terra Nullius logic with today’s intersecting ecosystemic crises.

INFRACTIONS features: Dimakarri ‘Ray’ Dixon (Mudburra); Jack Green (Garawa, Gudanji); Gadrian Hoosan (Garrwa, Yanyuwa); Robert O’Keefe (Wambaya), Juliri Ingra and Neola Savage (Gooreng Gooreng); Que Kenny (Western Arrarnta); Cassie Williams (Western Arrarnta); the Sandridge Band from Borroloola; and Professor Irene Watson (Tanganekald, Meintangk Bunganditj) contributor to the draft UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, 1990-1994.

Rachel O’Reilly is a settler artist, writer, curator and PhD researcher at Goldsmiths’ Centre for Research Architecture. She exhibits internationally and teaches a seminar on infrastructure and poetics as part of the How To Do Things with Theory program at the Dutch Art Institute. Recent curatorial collaborations include Ex-Embassy, Berlin; Planetary Records: Performing Justice between Art and Law, Contour Biennale; and Feminist Takes on Black Wave Film for Sternberg Press.

^{Image: Still from INFRACTIONS}

Acknowledgements:

Commissioned by KW Berlin Production Series, dedicated to artists’ moving image (supported by the
Julia Stoschek Collection and OUTSET Germany_Switzerland), INFRACTIONS premiered at Babylon
Kino Berlin and ICA London (discursive partner), featuring public programs with Que Kenny (Western
Arrarnta). The Australian Premiere and national tour of INFRACTIONS with First Nations expertise on
climate and water in all locations is supported by IMA Brisbane and Arts Queensland.