Rules of Play is a video installation set to premiere at the Biennale. For over a decade, Susan Norrie has focused on the intersection of environmental, geological, technological, political and indigenous issues in the Asia-Pacific region. She ruminates metaphorically on humanity’s fragile relationship to the environment and the potential for catastrophe. Dissent (2012) addressed the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster and recent Japanese protests against nuclear power.

Rules of Play extends Norrie’s interest to the subarctic seas and harsh climate of Hokkaido in northern Japan and Sakhalin Island in Russia’s Far East, a contested territory claimed by both countries. As oil and gas rigs are established to extract resources that could mitigate Japan’s reliance on nuclear power, tensions mount. Located within the Pacific Ring of Fire, the region is also prone to earthquakes. As a response, Norrie highlights the environmental knowledge and spirituality of the region’s earliest indigenous communities.
–GB