Matri Linear B takes the expressive powers of the Earth’s surface as “speaking landscapes” as its starting point, as agencies of a statement, while exploring how we can learn to see them.

Central for the project’s second part, Surfacing Earth, are the cosmologies and land rights politics of indigenous Australians in Yuendumu and Tijikala in the Northern Territories. They appear as a horizon and boundary in a transmitted cosmology that is over 40,000 years old. They require a way of thinking about the relativity of space, which, according to astrophysicist Arturo Escobar, “is not to be thought about with universal concepts, but with several universes at the same time that can be interconnected…”

Aboriginal story telling reflects the polyvalence of the visual field of landscape. The transmission of memory through song, dance and painting is a knowledge passed on according to one’s own responsibility, belonging and experience. Their history of origin is interwoven with the history of plants, minerals, stars and forms a historical continuity. Yet, it is interrupted by the colonial genocide and land theft of the British Empire and its settlement politics that is still the base of today’s repressive politics against aboriginal people