Trees and Shade on Palm Island

In a dark room of the Sydney Contemporary Art Museum (MCA) — when it’s not closed because of pandemics — is an 11 minute film called tall man by Vernon Ah Kee. Well, film’s not exactly the right word because it’s actually a “ four-screen video installation”, according to .

These video installations tend to feature a few people dressed in eccentric costumes, moving strangely for an indecipherable purpose, at least that’s been my experience.

Not tall man — not even close — because tall man is more like a supercut of four movies all telling the same story from different perspectives and recorded on different mediums.

What differentiates tall man even further from your usual art gallery fare of dancers moving ‘artistically’ across multiple screens is its subject; tall man is a documentary. Specifically, it documents civil unrest on , in Far North Queensland where the community rioted and burnt down the local police station after Mulrunji Doomadgee was killed in police custody. Punched to death.

The film loops through. You might walk in to watch speeches, sad speeches, angry speeches, caught on tape as a community simultaneously grieves, demands justice, and seeks to fight against oppressive forces entrenched on their home.

You also see the local police trying to grapple with a situation they are desperately losing control of — they retrieve their weapons, hide at the local hospital, and wait for reinforcements to arrive by helicopter.

The setting is idyllic: only smoke and anger mar an otherwise paradisal day.

Why don’t I remember Palm Island?

Last Friday — from 15,000km away — I watched in real-time as an enraged community burn down their local police department because of another black death in custody. From multiple angles, I saw the protesters breach the Minneapolis PD and cheer as it burnt to the ground.

“I have never seen a police building on fire. Ever,” New York Times correspondent, Audra Burch, told The Daily podcast. “Regardless of how intense demonstrations have been, I’ve never seen that before.”

Yeah, wow, I thought, listening to that podcast the next day, me either. The United States of America — the land of the free™ — was burning…

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