OUTWARD-BOUND

Outward-bound was shot over a twelve-day period in September 2010 which Catrysse spent on the flanks of the Kawah Ijen, a volcano in eastern Java that is known locally as a site of sulfur mining – an ancient industry that, somewhat inexplicably, has become a tourist attraction of sorts. The video triptych, featuring mirroring images that have been ingenuously welded together to increase the immersive panoramic effect, opens with a view of a bellowing mass of smoke blowing over a body of water – a lake inside the volcano’s active crater.

The ‘hostile’ landscape, due to its toxic colours, collapsed form and above all the excessive emission of noxious fumes, is alien to our usual notions of ‘landscape’. Because of its ‘fictitious’ qualities, we could easily situate this specific landscape in the past, as if it has not yet finished the process of ‘coming into existence’. However, we might just as well locate it in future times, where it could be on the verge of heading towards a most violent cataclysm and, so to speak, embrace its own ‘self-destruction’.