Sarako

Oil platforms attrack my attention. As enormous sea-insects, they dominate various coast lines, sucking black sirope out of the ocean’s bottom. I always wonder what’s life like there. A seemingly autonomous zone full of hard working men (?), responsible for the aquirement of this complex natural resource. Complex and powerful in many ways, environmentally, economically and politically.

While we didn’t get access to the oil platform, I visited the oil plant – with a scale model of both the plant and the rig – on the Taranaki coast. With my medium format camera, I captured the plant in twilight. (The images below are snapshots from my digital camera, since I haven’t been able to digitize the analogue slides yet)

Our search for interesting locations in Taranaki was difficult. Weather was one obstacle, the other was a lack of local knowledge to pursue our search. The fishery was one direction, but there wasn’t a strong enough context to connect it with. On our way back from our fishery discoveries, we came across a former hospital, or the overgrown remains of it.

Few professional fishermen are left in New Plymouth. Probably, this trend was followed by the closure of this fishery a decade ago. Completely stripped down, one room got my particular interest. Its blue color and light fall lit traces of prior business: rubber gloves.
While Derek [Holzer] was recording the microsounds of metal pipes, I inspected the inside of the blue room with my video camera. Justin [Morgan] was patiently sitting and listening to the rain dropping on the heavily destroyed roof.

Below just a few shapshots –>