1. Peter Burke Safe Deposit (The Teller) 2023, HD video, black and white, sound, 3:44.

Safe Deposit (The Teller) introduces a twist to fiscal transactions. As a polite bank teller transforms currency into an unexpected snack, one might wonder if he's consuming hard-earned cash or making a calculated investment. The act of digesting Australian dollars offers a whimsical take on financial matters, as humour becomes the ultimate currency.

2. David Lans and Warlayirti Artists. Videography Garreth Taylor and Gaby Mason. Mutikur Project Produced by Annette Cock and Sally Clifford. Music Tjupi Band and Wanatjarra Band. Car Troubles 2009, HD video, colour, sound, 12:55.

Car Troubles is written in local Aboriginal language in our own words, and was produced by our people on our Country. Founded on Balgo’s wealth of cultural practice, it is an inclusive video project that was created for all generations. Based on local narrative, Car Troubles is a drama about the real issues and events that effect young men who live on a remote community. Like the medium of digital video and the Internet, the car is an essential part of living on an isolated township. It connects community activities from all regions and facilitates transportation to Country, and off site Law activities. The continuing opportunity to expand our voice through video initiatives significantly contributes to the social and cultural well being of the Indigenous residents of the Kutjungka region.

3. Anna Hoyle Who wants to be a Krillionaire? 2023, HD video animation, colour, sound, 0:30.

Who Wants to be a Krillionaire? is a series of recent works inspired by both suburban objects and vernacular, as drawn from their current cultures of consumerism, motivation, and wellness. Material comfort, excess and abundance is the zenith of contemporary capitalism, its’ nadir is the true cost of our material wealth on exploitative labour and resource economies. Krill as motif and metaphor has become my graphic signifier of abundance, disparity and potential collapse of our capital system and dependencies. I like to manipulate a tragic-comic mix of text, audio mantra, and suburban essentials to arrive at new interpretations of capitalist contexts of consumerism. A celebratory, humorous and critical comment on consumer culture has been my way I can extend upon and reconcile our complicated existence with the impacts and anxieties of this culture on both society and environment.

4. Benedict Sibley, Commuter 2017, HD video, silent, 3:25.

'The moment of identification, unlike that of illumination, does not distinguish photography from other visual images, or even from encounters in the world at large. At work in any personal exchange, identification plays an integral role in the formation of groups. Moreover, it is not just identification of a subject that is at stake but, often, identification with it. The personal and social position through which the beholder is looking can bring what she or he sees into focus, or distort it beyond recognition.'— Olin, Margaret

5. Masato Takasaka, with Liquid Architecture, Jason Heller, Warren Taylor, Damiano Bertoli. The Artist As Session Musician, (Autotune Everything, Liquid Architecture) 2016, HD video, colour, sound, 11:17.

'anyone who says that they're not making music for other people can kiss my ass.' Masato Takasaka. This performance was commissioned by Liquid Architecture for Autotune Everything, The Greek Centre for Contemporary Culture, Melbourne 18- 20 August 2016. Video by Jason Heller. Poststructuralist Jam poster design by Warren Taylor. Catalogue text by Damiano Bertoli.

6. John Warwicker, tomato Dérive 1996, HD video, colour, sound, 6:25.

Inspired by the poetic wanderings and wonderings of the Situationists ‘Dérive’ is a conversation between Rick Smith (Underworld/tomato) and myself through the streets of Soho in London. As with any conversation between friends there’s a lot of ‘um’ing' and ‘argh’ing', talking over each other and abrupt changes in subject as we respond to the street life and the unexpected events and interventions that we encountered on our walk ‘around the ‘block’. The recording was finished once the 20 minute walk was complete. Once back in the recording studio Rick processed the sound converting our dialogue into a singular, female, monologue, which had it’s own particular and peculiar rhythm and cadence. On hearing Rick's soundtrack I then created the visuals by filming vertically placed lightboxes in a studio, placed the camera on rails, and moved the camera through this ’city of light’, and then superimposed numerous passes in order to create a hypnotic equivalent.

7. Amanda Morgan, soundtrack by Jeff Baker The Zooplankton's Dance: just what is it that makes seismic blasting so appealing in today's ocean homes? 2023, HD video animation, sound, 8:00.

The Zooplankton's Dance splices together titles from Hamon and Painlevé's marine science films and collage works by Hamilton and Rosler on 'home' in response to the ongoing air gun assault on global marine habitats caused by seismic testing from fossil fuel schemes in the Australian ocean. In the film, affectively moving troubles have prompted hybrid sea animals to join against warming oceans over maps of Australian testing sites. Drawing on imagined sea animal calls, underwater explosions, and Cousteau's marine biology documentary The Silent World, Morgan and Baker's 24 frames-per-second and 6 x 4 grid format is a one-second temporal marker for our short time to act. The animated film (Morgan) with slide guitar (Baker) targets UN 2024 Goal 14, 'Life Below Water.'

8. Liss Fenwick Mastotermes Darwiniensis /mɑːstɒtɜːmz ˈdɑːwɪŋ.ɪen.sɪs/ Giant Northern Termite HD video, colour, multi-channel sound, 5:30.

Mastotermes Darwiniensis /mɑːstɒtɜːmz ˈdɑːwɪŋ.ɪen.sɪs/Giant Northern Termite is a video and sound work sharing the perspective of a termite colony chewing, digesting and depositing English language books underground on the rural block I grew up on in the (so-called) ‘Northern Territory.’ In this work spanning several years, the iconic human knowledge-source becomes food-source for Mastotermes Darwiniensis, the giant northern termite. I began working with this termite colony when they started eating my late father’s shed. I fed them his books. Many of the books were fictionalised Australian history books written by colonialists. I selected other books paying attention to the artifice of history and colonising knowledge systems that continue to be imposed onto this place. Termites are widely poisoned as the insects are known to surreptitiously undermine a whole structure. Through this work I imagine both ‘living’ and ‘future’ unmoored from the problematic supremacy of Euro- and anthropo-centric knowledge systems.

9. David Harley Compulse 2023, HD video animation, colour, sound, 5:06.

Compulse is a series of sped-up automatistically developed ‘free-form’ digital ‘paintings’, using a commonly available digital ‘drawing’ App on a tablet computer.

10. David McBurney (blank) AND (blank) 2023, conjoined word pairs collected from 100 artists in the week following referendum. 2017 ongoing, HD video, sound, 5:40.

Conjoined word pairs collected from 100 artists in the week following referendum.

11. Stephen Haley Succession (Boardroom) 2022, HD video animation, colour, sound, 1:53.

The video work Succession is modelled and animated using 3D software. It pictures a series of generic, virtual boardrooms typical of corporate and business meeting rooms. They appear, enlarge, and engulf the previous one in regular succession. Except they aren’t just virtual, they are also actual. Sourced from sets of virtual models manufactured by companies who offer actual boardrooms for purchase, these virtual models are displayed on the Internet so you can select one to fit out your office. So all these boardrooms must also exist somewhere in the world as actual builds. I don’t have an office to fit out with a boardroom, so I made these (sort of) pretend ones instead. And made a soundtrack to go with it. I consider rapid, global urbanization and the emerging digital world as the two great defining characteristics of the contemporary world. As per Marx’s explanation of historical materialism, they fundamentally shape all aspects of modern being, are the source of our greatest comforts and our greatest anxieties. This work reflects another aspect of those ongoing concerns, among other things.

12. Natasha Johns-Messenger 511 2008, SD video, colour, sound 10:29.

The general conceptual objectives and theoretical agenda underlying my installation works has been three-fold: one, to dissolve parameters between art-object and its context by using the exhibition site as subject; two, to change the way immediate space is perceived or viewed by developing modes of representation such as real-time image capture inside optical viewing structures; and three, to create artworks that are predominantly experiential (not object based). Although I've done many site-films as part of my installations, 511 is the first site-film I've made for a particular cinema. All the images and sounds in the film come from the cinema and projection room. The cinema, known simply as 511 is situated in inside Columbia University’s School of the Arts in New York in a building called Dodge Hall. 511 was made specifically for the space, and shown there in 2008. When viewing 511 outside this context, it will be interesting to see what is lost or gained. In addition to this, a cinema like 511 may also morph or change over time, therefore showing it again in 511 (which is the intention), at a later date, may also have a similar removal of context, albeit a temporal not a spatial one.

13. Kieran Boland I was Building a House with Bucket Men. 2023, Single Channel, 4K video and animation,16:9, stereo sound, 8:35.

A sombre document of a failed private housing project in inner city Melbourne in the guise of a music video made amidst the aftermath of floods. A solitary man, akin to a ghost, is seen forlornly gazing into black pools of water in the dead of night at the housing site, and somewhere in a more hopeful past. Through song, he tells the viewer that they can take a picture, and he'll stand right there. The project's title takes its cue from Gene Hackman's dying words in the Clint Eastwood film 'Unforgiven' (1992). Hackman, as the murderous racist sheriff Little Bill Daggett, lies dumbfounded on the floor of a Wild West Saloon, having discovered the protections granted by home ownership on stolen land can be a fleeting illusion. Featuring Angus HAMILTON. Music by Bucket Men.

14. Melody Laglína Woodnutt The Moment of Air Before a Whisper 2023, 16mm film to HD video, colour, sound, 3:19.

The Moment of Air Before a Whisper - a return to Pagan dreaming. Obscurity of a liminal lost/found belief. To turn on a sense, feeling a whisper, Hitchcock's spell meets a philosophical 'turn' at the realisation something is not what it seems. A short 16mm film shot with Bolex camera as part of a project with local ARI and analogue film collective, Artist Film Workshop. The film levitates through the threshold. Ravens call out at the point of anagnorisis: the moment of a plot in which ignorance shifts into knowledge. Typically in theatre or film the protagonist makes a critical discovery whereupon the audience shares their experience of shock, catharsis, enthralment, or a deep realisation as to the true nature of the afore upheld circumstances that have now fallen away. The 'turn' of this sort is found in Aristotle, narrative, horror, and especially Hitchcock's films. Screened with The Wandering Room for the Melbourne Fringe, Nov 2020.

15. Darren Wardle X Brie Trenerry Exponential horizon 2023, AI HD video, colour, sound, 2:36.

Exponential horizon is an AI film made with Brie Trenerry from Darren Wardle’s paintings in which the moving image is anything but a catastrophe.

16. Steven Rhall Aboriginal Artist Google Search 2020, SD Video, colour, sound, 00:30.

Commissioned by Kingston Arts for NAIDOC week in 2021, Steven Rhall made a series of commercials, each one a variation of Chris Burdens’ of the late 1970’s and investigating the same themes yet as they pertained to his own practice. Rhall is a post-conceptual artist operating from a First Nation, white-passing, positionality. Rhall’s interdisciplinary practice responds to the intersectionality of First Nation art practice and the Western art canon. He interrogates modes of representation, classification and hierarchy using installation, performance, process lead methodologies, ‘curatorial’ projects, sculpture, and via public & private interventions. He was recently awarded the Paul Selzer Prize, and is represented in various collections including the National Gallery of Victoria. Steve is represented by Mars Gallery and is a current studio artist at Gertrude Contemporary.

17. Blake Dearman The Inside of A Square 2023 HD video, sound.

Blake Dearman works across a variety of different mediums, including photography, video, and sound. His work incorporates traditional methods of image-making together with more contemporary approaches such as data visualisation and digital synthesis. A background in electrical engineering, paired with an interest in existential philosophy serve as the grounding point for Blake seeking to understand the role of technology in shaping the way that people interact with the world. The Inside of a Square contemplates a rudimentary shape, which nearly never forms naturally. Its straight lines and perfect dimensions are based on a mathematical ideal, rather than a reflection of something existing. This video was produced using technologies such as photogrammetry and data visualisation, while the accompanying audio track combines audio synthesis with field recordings.

18. Craig Easton Measuring Nothing 2019, HD video, colour, sound, 3:20.

The camera drags across the uneven floor of my old studio, recording a run of instruments of measure in a line sometimes straight, sometimes bent. Nothing very much happens. Occasionally the camera and user are caught up in reflections, marking the unmediated means of production as much subject as anything else. This little film was originally made to show in a K11 Art Mall museum in Shenyang - like a bank, a place dedicated to Capital (and certainly the spending of it). Sometimes value lies in its absence. Or not.

19. EG Productions, directed by Ella and Greg Stehle. Yolngu Vision 2011, SD video, SD Video, colour, sound, 10:50.

Yolngu Vision was filmed in north east Arnhem Land at Banthula, Yalingbura and Gunyangara.Through working with Yolngu people on a project about mental health for Indigenous people, we found ourselves talking with Yolngu people about some of the things they want for the future, and some of the things people are interested in sharing with other people. Through these interractions, we can get a sense of Yolngu people that is far removed from the depiction often portrayed in mainstream media channels. We found people who are working, and actively looking to share their culture with visitors from elsewhere, to build businesses that hold onto their cultural practices. Through being able to speak the language, and being related through adopted family networks, we were able to capture different stories that people relate almost organically. In this snapshot and various asides, we can see people who are practicing traditional practices not for commercial gain, but because they see them as necessary for survival. This is particularly relevant in the area of mental health, where maintaining traditional law and discipline are often ways of keeping young people away from negative influences. In our work, we often see glimpses of a more positive future for some Yolngu people, and we hope that these glimpses can turn into a wider vision that can be seen by people outside of their own sphere of influence.

20. Joseph Blair Oceans 32 2012, HD video, colour, sound duration: 6:50.

Thirty-two streams of the ocean taken from unsecured surveillance networks allude to the instability of human perception and the liminal self in contemporaneity. Employing a tension between the myriad patterns of the natural world, against the friction of inconsistent video resolutions, the work poses questions regarding the hierarchy of physical and digital existence. Conjuring further concerns around the omnipresence and normalisation of surveillance in both the private and public sphere. Dissolving uncomfortable lines between digital and physical reality. Melbourne-based artist Joseph Blair (b. 1995) works between photographic, mixed media and moving image mediums. His practice involves the social and emotional impacts that stem from our collective relationships with technology and online spaces. Within this field of focus, he is particularly interested in surveillance and security, artificial intelligence, the blurring geographic lines within technological realms and the ties between the natural and electronic worlds. His works explore this liminal space/self by grappling with raw and vibrant imagery taken from both the obscure and the mundane.

21. Janet Burchill, Jennifer McCamley and Robin Hely, soundtrack by Ed Kuepper Pangaea 2004, HD video, sound, 8:20.

This video was made for Ed Kuepper’s Music for Len Lye, a project initiated by David Pestorius. Pangaea was a response to a piece of music by Ed Kuepper which was itself a response to Len Lye’s 1929 experimental film, Tusalava. At its original screenings, Tusalava had been accompanied by live music but the score for that music (Lye’s original music to Tusalava) has long been lost. Kuepper composed a new music track to accompany Lye’s film and we then made an image track to accompany this piece of music in the spirit of the original Tusalava. There are several points in our video that reference the original Tusalava. Another element running through Pangaea is the use of old nautical charts, one of which features Manus Island. By 2004, the year in which Pangaea was made, ‘Pacific solutions’ were in the air and Manus Island was one of them.

22. Kate Beynon, Rali Beynon & Michael Pablo Spirits Summoning 2023, HD video and colour animation, sound, 6:02.

Spirits Summoning is a collaborative work by Naarm-based creative family collective Kate Beynon, Rali Beynon & Michael Pablo (aka TudoFAM), multidisciplinary artists merging art-forms across painting, fashion, textile works, interactive spaces, public art, animation and projection art. Combining experimental watercolour and digital techniques, Spirits Summoning features a cast of supernatural characters (adapted from the KB X RB—Mask Spirits collaborative series) brought to life as unconventional protective figures appearing amidst aquatic backdrops, kaleidoscopic serpentine patterns and botanical forms. Accompanied by an atmospheric soundtrack, the work aims to create an otherworldly dreamspace to counteract troubled times. Drawing inspiration from their blend of diverse cultural backgrounds including Cantonese-Malaysian, First Nations Pima-Mexican, Afro-Caribbean, Welsh/Celtic and Nordic ancestries, Spirits Summoning explores ideas of storytelling, kindred spirits, shapeshifting and hybrid identities via guardian figures and talismanic imagery. TudoFAM are Studio Artists based at Collingwood Yards / Kate Beynon is a Teaching Associate in Design VCA/Uni Melbourne & Represented by Sutton Gallery, Naarm/Melbourne. We are grateful to live, work and create on Woiwurrung, Boonwurrung, Wurundjeri Kulin Country and extend Respect to All First Nations People.

23. Karen Ann Donnachie & Andy Simionato, Music by Sinistri (ex-Starfuckers) Holes in Between 2005-2023, Single-channel digital video (DV), 6:00.

'Sometimes… it is necessary to make holes, to introduce voids and white spaces, to rarify the image, by suppressing many things that have been added to make us believe that we were seeing everything. It is necessary to make a division or make emptiness in order to find the whole again.' –Deleuze, Cinema-2, 1985. In collaboration with underground rock group Sinistri (Manuele Giannini, Alessandro Bocci and Roberto Bertacchini) first screened at Netmage, a fringe performance festival in Bologna, Italy in 2005.

24. Hiball Redoubt 2022, HD video, colour, sound, 6:59.

Caught in a neoliberal stasis, two freelancers work deep beneath the earth;refreshing tabs, sending emails, waiting for video conferences to begin. Time layered upon each other, trying to decide the right WFH outfit. In 2022 Hiball were featured in Nick Knight's Showstudio Showcase.

25. John Waller On Deck at Ningaloo 2023, HD video, colour, sound, 4:33.

On Deck at Ningaloo uses footage taken with an action cam while on a tourist boat, out near Ningaloo Reef, Western Australia. The video can be seen as part of a series of works coming out of a six month road trip from Darwin, down the West Coast of WA, and across to Melbourne, in 2019. In the context of this exhibition, I see the experience of sitting on the bow of the boat, immersion in the journey, as individual cultural capital.

26. Sonia Payes Corn & Quarries 2013, HD video, colour, sound, 1.52.

Sonia Payes unfolds a mesmerizing video, Corn & Quarries, within the context of the DAS KAPITAL exhibition. While the typical pastoral scene of wind caressing fields of golden corn or wheat evokes feelings of tranquility, ‘Payes's video takes a divergent path, replacing serenity with an unexplainable dread and a profound inversion of perceived well-being... In this realm, sounds of icy wind provide a chilling soundtrack as hillsides teem with life, yet the tall stems are not wheat or corn but 'plants' comprised of multiplied infinitesimal human faces—specifically, the visage of Payes's daughter. As the viewer is compelled over this eerie landscape, the faces are arranged in a Janus-like manner or akin to the guardians of Angkor Wat, gazing North, West, South, and East. Despite their all-seeing nature, their crowded mass, buffeted by the wind, suggests a vulnerability, perhaps awaiting the arrival of a thrasher machine to harvest this peculiar crop... The video crafts a dystopian world inspired by Payes's imagination, seamlessly integrated with technology. Throughout the video, totems of feminine perfection take centre stage, oscillating between a stern solidity, as if carved from rock and crafted as deities to be worshipped, and a hypnotic dance in open fields, embodying creatures of sentient pollen... This haunting juxtaposition prompts contemplation on the purpose of this yield of beatific faces, creating a layered and thought-provoking narrative that transcends the boundaries of imagination, technology, and the disconcerting reality of our world.’—Excerpts from 'Interzone Catalogue,' Dr. Ashley Crawford.

27. Martine Corompt and Camille Hannan The Waiting Room 2022, HD video, colour, sound, 10:28.

I sometimes imagine the gallery as a type of waiting room. A waiting room that is constantly being redecorated with new artworks, a clean well-lighted place1 an antechamber to be occupied only until I get to the main event—whatever that is. A therapist might advise me that this is very common, that we all feel like we are waiting for something to happen, waiting for our real life to start. Siegfried Kracauer says those who wait are in a state of suspension, of intellectual and spiritual homelessness. But life is a constant series of moments of waiting: waiting for the doctor, waiting in traffic, or waiting for the tram; waiting to fall asleep, for the rain to stop, or just for the end. (Excerpt from catalogue essay).

28. Ian Haig Trip Advisor 2020, HD video, black and white, sound, 3:10.

The unreality of really, really bad Trip Advisor reviews manifested as reality. Like many things on the internet a disconnect exists between online and offline worlds. In this case Trip Advisor reviews and the reality of what the location, hotel, etc is actually really like. This work amplifies the notion of terrible online reviews documented here in a physical reality, as if such negative reviews online have manifested their own offline reality. As the aftermath of a zombie apocalypse, dystopian nightmare, or post apocalyptic holiday rental.

29. Bernhard Sachs X Brie Trenerry Posthumous Requiem 2009-2023, HD video, sound, 5:30.

In 2009 Bernhard Sachs exhibited a monumental suite of works accompanied by extended performances in Anathema/Anachronism/Apostasy at the Margaret Lawrence Gallery, Melbourne. The event was recorded by Kellie Wells and Brie Trenerry. Sitting untouched for over ten years, the tapes have recently been transcoded to HD and edited by Trenerry.

30. Brie Trenerry X Min Wong Away Team Hologram fan, HD video, 3D Render, 2022. 0:20.

The Nike Decade trainer is such a rarity in the world of sneaker currency that one of the few coveted pairs in existence is being offered on Ebay for $6,660 US. For the uninitiated, the Decade was an inexpensive line brought out by Nike in the mid 1990’s in an unassuming black and white colour-way. It was discontinued in 1997 when 39 members of the Heavens Gate cult based in San Diego, took their own lives en masse having donned identical pairs of the shoe as part of their preparations to escape earth in the tail of the Hale Bopp comet under the guidance of their leaders Marshall Applewaite and Bonnie Nettles. Nike’s slogan at the time was ‘Just do It’. Away Team is a collaboration between Wong & Trenerry that was commissioned by Cement Fondu as part of Wong’s solo installation Lone Wolf in 2022. In this work, frequent collaborators Trenerry and Wong explore the themes of ‘currency’ and ‘grails’ in terms of spirituality, wellness, altered states and cultural esoterica in the context of countercultural movements from the 1970s to the present day. Special thanks to 3D artists Christina Yang & Yang Hu. Min Wong is represented by Hugo Michell Gallery Adelaide. Brie Trenerry is represented by MARS Gallery Melbourne.

31. BOOreaucrats (Benjamin Sheppard & Peter Burke) Signs of Agreement 30th November 2023.

The BOOreaucrats (Benjamin Sheppard and Peter Burke) explore cultural introspection through the lens of institutional bureaucracy. The duo administrators investigate the investigators, examine the examiners, and perform purposeful profundity through gestures that result in bureaucratic documents, administrative ephemera and more red tape.

This project takes place on the traditional Lands of the Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung and Bunurong peoples of the East Kulin Nations and we pay our respect to their Elders past, present and emerging.

Das Kapital is Part of Not Fair 2023, and proudly supported by

myshrine.org/dasKapital