Dear visitor and potential fellow researcher,

 

This website was produced in collaboration with the artwork CMATS 2014, with the specific purpose of encouraging viewers to inform themselves of the details surrounding the Australian Federal Government’s past, present and future dealings with the neighbouring State of Timor-Leste (otherwise known as East Timor). The following page provides links to websites I found to be useful starting points in my own research of the topic.

 

This project began for me in late July 2014, after unwittingly attending an annual oration held in my hometown. The speaker was Jenny Coles, former right hand of Kirsty Sword Gusmão, Timor Leste’s Ambassador for Education and wife to the Prime Minister. It was here that I heard for the first time – and from a woman with first hand experience – of the shameful conduct of the Australian Government in their dealings with what is the youngest and one of the poorest countries in Southeast Asia. Dealings which affected and outraged me so, that I felt, as an Australian citizen, I had a duty to further educate myself, and as a practicing artist, to grapple with these issues within my work.

 

One of the pieces I created within this project, entitled we need justice not aid, is a choreographed screen recording of my own online research vis-à-vis relations between Timor Leste and Australia. At intervals the cursor movements within the video become increasingly erratic and hurried, flashing images or scrolling rapidly, contrasting with slower moments emphasising certain phrases or photographs. The video was interesting in that, presented on a laptop there was the familiarity of surfing the net. Yet being a screen recording there is a defamliarisation, as it is not the viewer controlling the pace and direction of the ‘surf’ but an unseen presence, in much the same way media controls the information presented to the general public. The screen recording evolved to become this website, providing links to all the web pages which appear within the video.