— Outward-bound | 2010
Wim Catrysse

OUTWARD-BOUND was filmed over a twelve-day period in September 2010 on the flanks of Kawah Ijen, an active volcano in eastern Java that is both a site of sulphur mining—an ancient industry that, somewhat inexplicably, has become a tourist attraction of sorts. The resulting video triptych, composed of mirroring images seamlessly fused to intensify its panoramic scope, opens with a vision of roiling smoke drifting over a pale blue lake at the heart of the volcano’s crater—a desolate tableau that seems to resist familiar definitions of landscape.

 

In the midst of this desolation, workers are seen harvesting sulphur with metal poles and wicker baskets, toiling in appalling conditions amidst the suffocating clouds of noxious gas. This ‘hostile’ terrain, alienated by its toxic yellow hues, grimly fractured outlines, and the choking presence of fumes, destabilises our conventional associations with natural vistas.

 

The landscape feels strangely ‘fictitious,’ as if occupying a liminal state between existence and oblivion. This ambiguity suspends it in a temporal flux: it could just as plausibly be situated in a primordial past, perpetually on the brink of formation, or in a distant, foreboding future, teetering toward violent self-annihilation.

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OUTWARD-BOUND thus captures a landscape suspended between genesis and destruction—a precarious world that mirrors nature’s relentless confrontation with its own demise.