Karrabing Film & Art Collective – Elizabeth A. Povinelli

The research at the Museo delle Civiltà – developed in collaboration with Visible, Cittadellarte-Fondazione Pistoletto and Fondazione Zegna – by the Karrabing Film & Art Collective (established in 2013) and Elizabeth A. Povinelli (1962, Buffalo, USA. She lives and works between New York City, USA and the Northern Territory, Australia) initially focused on the Prehistoric and Protohistoric Collectionswith a series of wall interventions (Roots/Routes: The Present as Prehistorical Sedimentation / Roots/Strails: The Present as Prehistorical Sedimentation, 2022) aimed at investigating geological/historical stratifications and expanding the very concept of prehistory by freeing it from positivist constructs that connect it to a dimension of primitivism. They have also worked on the methodological Entrance of the Palazzo delle Scienze by analysing the representation of indigenous bodies by Western explorers and are carrying out further research in connection with the re-curation of the Collections of Oceanian Arts and Cultures and Pacific Islands.

The Karrabing Film Collective is an indigenous group that uses video and other low-cost media to interrogate conditions of inequality in the Northern Territory in Australia. The term karrabing, which means ‘low tide’ in the Emmiyengal language, refers to a form of collectivity outside the constraints of land ownership imposed by the Australian central government. The group consists of an intergenerational mix of more than fifty members of the Belyuen community, together with the theorist Elizabeth Povinelli, who has worked with the community since 1984. The Karrabing Film Collective invites viewers to observe the coexistence of humans and their more-than-human ancestors in the context of a habitat stretching from the salt marshes of today’s Top End region of Australia – the ancestral territory of the Karrabing members – to the Alps, from where Povinelli’s family of origin descends. They propose a reflection on the ongoing processes of colonisation in the context of today’s globalisation, and ways of responding to it. Karrabing’s films were awarded with the Visible Award and the Cinema Nova Award for Best Fiction Short at the Melbourne International Film Festival in 2015, and have been screened internationally, including at the Biennale of Sydney (2016), the Berlinale’s Expanded Forum, Berlin, at Tate Modern, London, at documenta-14, Kassel, at the Contour Biennale, Mechelen (2017), at the Melbourne International Film Festival (2018), at MoMA PS1, New York (2019), at Wexner Center for the Arts-Cinetracts, Columbus (2020), at the Serpentine Galleries, London (2021), at Castello di Rivoli Museum of Contemporary Art, Rivoli-Turin (2022), at Secession, Vienna, and at the Ocean Space, Venezia (2023).