The Vanuatu Chronicles
1998, 277 minutes
Vanuatu, formerly New Hebrides, is an island country
in the southern Pacific Ocean, east of northern Australia. This non-narrative
travel-log is a saga simply by virtue of its length.
It is screened continuously so viewers can enter
at any point. More than likely they will encounter passages which are
ethnographic in nature, documenting in rich detail, the landscape, rituals
and lives of Vanutians who inhabit one of the smaller islands.
This type of footage occupies the greater portion
of the piece. Particularly striking is the capture of an enormous eel
at a waterfall on the island's interior or stretches of beach, blackened
by volcanic sands in which Vanutians draw elaborate curvilinear patterns
that have been passed down to them for generations.
Although it beautifully depicts Vanuatu, the piece
is about Auder whose impetus to travel to the other side of the globe
came under personal duress of a failed marriage. (His second marriage
to the artist Cindy Sherman was dissolving.) In this respect, it shares
an affinity with Morocco 1972. But unlike the Moroccan Chronicles there
was no wife to edit from the footage. Just Auder trying to substitute
geographic for emotional excape. It is a study in self consciousness
as Auder repeatedly turns the lens on himself, in many instances having
nothing to say.
The work starts with him packing his bags and arriving
at the country's capital, Vila where he stays at a bland hotel whose
sterility he documents as a foil to the rest of the trip. He befriends
one of the hotel workers who takes him to his native remote island where
Auder spends the majority of his stay. He returns to the hotel only
once before leaving.
Although the piece is non-narrative it has a structure
which involves cycles of dissipation in Auder's selfconsciousness. Unlike
other works in which he appears, in Vanuatu, Auder is extremely conscious
of his own presence. The country serves as a backdrop into which Auder
at times fails and others succeeds in pasting himself only to lose himself
in the fantasy of a simpler life.