Dierk Schmidt: Packing the Hard Potatoes
Lars Bang Larsen untangles Dierk Schmidt’s investigations of the ‘screens on which public life is played out’ — the layers of event, spin and reaction that comprise history in the making. Three hundred and fifty-three refugees, many of them children, died as their small and overloaded boat sank in 2001 in the sea between Indonesia, where they started from, and Australia, where they were headed. Their vessel sank well within Australian waters, leaving it an open question what that country’s navy and air force were doing to maintain the notoriously fine line of control: survivors claimed to have seen navy ships that had not initiated rescue measures on that night.
