vox★somnia

wayfinderisaac:

39. Nauru 

In the 1980’s Nauru became one of the richest nations per capita on the planet due to extensive phosphate mining at its core.  The centre of this island is now mined out but the resulting landscape is pretty neat.  The jagged rocks also known as moonscape make for a unique hike at the very least..

ottoosworth:

_{Illustration by Alan Baker}

The Ancient Spider in the mythology of Nauru (Micronesia). In the beginning only Areop-Enap and the sea existed. Then one day he discovered a mussel shell. After much trouble he managed to open it and crept inside. It was so dark inside the sell that he could see nothing so he passed some of his power on to the small snail and made it the moon. By the faint light of the moon he spied a worm, which he set to work separating the upper and lower parts of the shell. These became the sky and the earth. When the worm was finished it died of exhaustion, and became the sun. The sweat of the worm, running into the lower shell, became the sea.

From stones Areop-Enap made man to support the sky, and then traveled to the newly created world. There he discovered other beings and learned there names by creating a winged creature from the dirt under his nails. This flying “bird” annoyed to people and they called to each other to kill it. Thus the Spider knew what they were called. -Pantheon.org

(via simonthemonsterhunter-deactivat)

danbourke:

Nicholas Mangan, Dowiyogo’s Ancient Coral Coffee Table, 2009-10. Coral limestone from the island of Nauru; 120 x 80 x 45 cm.

This project attempts to enter into the history of the island Republic of Nauru by completing a proposition but forward by the former president Bernhard Dowiyogo.

Lying on his death bed in a Washington D.C hospital in 2003, at the time of Nauru’s imminent bankruptcy, Dowigyogo was quoted by an American reporter as saying that his plan to save Nauru’s ailing economy was to turn the remaining coral rock on the island into ancient coffee coral tables. These were to be sold on the US market. Dowiyogo passed away before his project could be realized.

The rock used in Dowiyogo’s Ancient Coral Coffee Table was sourced from Melbourne, Australia; the exact coral limestone pinnacles which had been shipped from Nauru during its 1970s hay-day. The pinnacles were installed in the forecourt of the high-rise Nauru House, which the country had built with money made from the strip-mining and selling of their island’s nutrient rich interior to western interests. Agriculture - phosphate.

The pinnacles were erected as a symbol of prosperity, but in 2004 when Nauru House was sold to pay off the island’s national debt, they were torn from their podiums and removed from the site. By locating and purchasing a section of the pinnacles from the private owner who came to possess them, a homage to Dowiyogo’s project and the dying island itself was completed.