Many Ways to Tell the Story: Ijen Volcano Sulfur Miners from East Java, Indonesia

Credit: Still from A Step on the Sun, 2012. Courtesy of Janet Biggs, CONNERSMITH, and Galerie Anita Beckers.

Lesson Planning and Working with Media:Addressing Common Core ELA Standards

ReadingCollege and Career Readiness Anchor Standard 7

Integrate and evaluate content presented in diverse formats and media, including visually and quantitatively, as well as in words.

Speaking and Listening College and Career Readiness Anchor Standard 2

Integrate and evaluate information presented in diverse media and formats, including visually, quantitatively, and orally.

Gather relevant information from multiple print and digital sources, assess the credibility and accuracy of each source, and integrate the information while avoiding plagiarism.

WritingCollege and Career

Readiness Anchor Standard 8

Kawah Ijen, East Java, Indonesia

• Site of intense sulfur mining• Miners carry 165-200 lbs of sulfur, 2 x/day, weigh• Earn $12 per day• 200-500 miners harvest 20% natural daily output

SulfurSulfur is used for: processing rubberbleaching sugarin pesticides and fungicides in gunpowder and fireworksin matches in hair and skin products.

Lesson Objectives• Watch video footage showing

sulfur miners on Ijen volcano in Java, Indonesia;

• look at photos and read about the sulfur miners;

• work in a group to synthesize observations and compare and contrast genres;

• evaluate and discuss each piece to decide which method may be the best for depicting human exploitation and why;

• and write a short essay in response to a quote using evidence from the different depictions of the sulfur miners’ plight.

Pre-reading: What’s in a Name?• Where Heaven Meets Hell• A Step on the Sun• Ijen Crater (beauty and irony)• Sulphur miners in clouds of

noxious fumes at Ijen volcano crater in Indonesia

• Serfdom of Sulphur Night• Think your work is hell? Thank

your lucky stars you didn't have to mine sulphur for 12 hours in a volcano crater filled with toxic fumes that will probably kill you before you are 30

Visual and Literary Elements

• What is the story? What is the message/purpose? • Genre/form: How is it told? What is it? (categories)• Who made it? Why? (Influence of point of view)• What clues can you get from the way the piece is

displayed/published/disseminated and made as to who might be the intended audience?

• What makes the piece unique? How was it made?(Distinctive formal elements, sound, color, tone, etc.)

Genre & Purpose

Mark Jenkins, journalist, wroteThe political aspect of the nine-minute video is ambiguous. …Biggs risks submerging human struggles in epic visuals. The piece’s featured miner would probably prefer a state-of-the-art respirator to these artful views of blue water and yellow smoke. Whatever Biggs’s intended message, however, her compositions and editing are worthy of the video’s eerie location.

Janet Biggs said,• I ride the line of documentary

very closely and consciously. I think of my work as portraiture. I let my audience make their own decisions about what’s happening.

• I met [miner Slamet Hariadi] at the weigh station. Right away I knew he was the focus of the piece. I would trail after him as he went about his normal day. He understood the poetry I was after. He’d point out beautiful things even as he was hauling more than his body weight.

Purpose & Point of ViewFrom Blogging to Fundraising

Its beautifully dreamy for me, the whole picture of the mountain and the lake. But once i have to face the sulfur miners, my heart couldnt bear the image… The sound of their creaking bamboo basket and their gasping breath went penetrate straight to my heart, choked out the spoil person out of me, and all i could do just stumble and cried…Their shoulders had turn to rock it self from carry the burden.//“i think they are happy, Sita!” was a comment from a photo-journalist friend who stayed at the miners village for 3 days, and we agreed that they are like that simply because they havent seen the world out there, where better life exist.//And sound of the creaking bamboo basket and gasping breath haunted me for weeks.

Sources/References• Biggs, J. janet biggs: video artist. http://www.jbiggs.com/index.html.• Friedlander, S. Where Heaven Meets Hell: The Sulfur Miners of Kawah Ijen [trailer].

http://vimeo.com/user3133803. • Friedlander, S. Where Heaven Meets Hell: The Sulfur Miners of Kawah Ijen. Kickstarter.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1026399862/where-heaven-meets-hell-the-sulfur-miners-of-kawah

• Grunewald. O. Serfdom of Sulphur Night: Kawah Ijen Volvano Indonesia. Retrieved from http://www.oliviergrunewald.com/photo/english/Stories-Kawah-Ijen.html

• Ijen. Wikipedia. Retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ijen• Jenkins, M. April 6, 2012. “Janet Biggs creates an active art experience with ‘Kawah Ijen.’”

Washington Post Online. Retrieved February 3, 2014 from http://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/museums/janet-biggs-creates-an-active-art-experience-with-kawah-ijen/2012/04/26/gIQAPFfwjT_story.html

• Miller, S. “On the Spot: Janet Biggs” (Interview). March 21, 2012. The Washington Post Express Online. Retrieved rom http://www.washingtonpost.com/express/wp/2012/03/21/on-the-spot-janet-biggs/

• Teofani, S. “Ijen Crater (beauty and irony).” Sita teofani: exploring..defining…being (blog) December 16, 2012. Retrieved from http://sitateofani.wordpress.com/2012/12/16/ijen-crater-beauty-and-irony/