Immersive Light Installation

DISCO APOCALYPSE (2022)

Karachi Biennale, PAKISTAN. October-November 2022

This immersive light installation is a nihilistic frenzy, an almost unbearable reality. Come and rave on the precipice of the abyss.

Welcome to DISCO APOCALYPSE. A nihilistic frenzy. An almost unbearable reality. We invite audiences to rave on the precipice of the abyss.

This immersive light installation is a perspective-warping onslaught of over-saturated colour, lighting and sound. Layered visuals coat the disco’s walls and floor. Shafts of moving light and bass-heavy electronic grooves are felt viscerally. Multiple video artworks beam out from screens. People are invited to stay and absorb this hedonistic celebration of end times.

DISCO APOCALYPSE places the artists’ work in the context of a wider society who is in stasis. A society who is unable to take action on climate realities, and who draws on rich environmental and cultural resources for hedonistic pleasure. The DISCO APOCALYPSE is a warning, one that inspires change that’s led by environmental and culturally embedded action.

This immersive disco was made using traditional art, science, computational mathematics and graphic-design skills. The visuals feature First Nations war shields. Shields elicit protective qualities. They’re re-imagined here, by Yorta Yorta Australian artist Lorraine Brigdale, as a tool for the protection of natural ecosystems. Accompanying the shields are enlarged microscope imagery and generative-computational imagery.

DISCO APOCALYPSE was created from audio and visual elements collected and created during Betty’s time in numerous international locations. This immersive light installation features fractured visuals and audio from Amazonia (Brazil), Gamboa (Panama), Batticaloa (Sri Lanka), Karachi (Pakistan), Gili Trawanga (Indonesia) and on Koori lands (Australia). She acknowledges the First Peoples and communities of these lands. Betty came to these landscapes with presence and intention and pays respect to the culture, lives and struggles of these peoples and lands. In making and presenting this artwork, Betty gratefully acknowledges First People’s custodianship and connection to landscape.

Betty lives and works on the unceded land of the Yaluk-ut Weelam clan who are Boon Wurrung people. She pays respect to ancestors, elders and communities. Lorraine Brigdale is a Yorta Yorta artist who lives and works on the land of the Dja Dja Wurrung and the Taungurung peoples of the Kulin Nation. Always was, always will be, Aboriginal Land.

CREDITS

Betty Sargeant (she/they): Artist (micrographs, graphic design, video artworks, audio field recordings), creative director, producer

Lorraine Brigdale (she/her): Artist (shields), cultural leader

Justin Dwyer (he/him): Audio composer, lighting designer

CONTACT

Betty Sargeant lives and works on the unceded land of the Yaluk-ut Weelam clan who are Boon Wurrung people. She pays respect to ancestors, elders and communities.