Australians are innately Fascist, whist I am God

The theme for this third and final ’artistic’ intervention into a now despised and over ideated environment is that of age.

The piece consists of the placement/arrangement of 3 bodies in a series of 3 staged vignettes. Faced away from the audience, the unidentified bodies may stand for the everyman, but also in their aspect as representatives of age, the young, the old, the new and the eternal.

The first image of two standing children shows outwardly the easy impost of humans on the flora and fauna of Canberra. But take away the debased utilitarian concept of a foolishly created capital and what we have is intrinsically and unmistakeably a fullsome representation of the rural youth of Emilia Romagna (1) who at Mussolini’s behest imposed an ancient ideal of youthful despoilation upon Italy in 1922. The seemingly casual innocents in (school) uniform are clearly redolent of the blackshirted (uniformed) youth of the Fascisti who marched triumphantly on Rome on October 30, 1922. That it is Australian youth who stand challenging and representing the defeat of European liberalism, the overthrow of enlightenment and the destruction of tradition is no plain device, but a telling portent. There are no Edelweiss pirates on Australian soil.

The second image is of the children fallen, or so it appears. The viewer may firstly perceive here is the collapse of nihilistic Fascism, the rejection of the power of youth, the failure of the new, the re-establishment of ancient order and precedence, but look again, this is a negotiated fall, there has been no collapse, the supposed fallen are attentive, alert, resting and ready to spring immediately back to a standing position, ready to overthrow at any moment again the ‘old’ order. They are the waiters in the wings looking for the chink in the armour of age. This thus is the threat of the new and the young, that they are ever present, ever waiting, ever ready. The past is always with us, but so is its replacement.

The final image is in some respects a Chronos manque - a looker into time, but not here looking both to the past and simultaneously the future. In this instance with eyes averted, back turned, the viewer is thus left unsure of direction and so caught between time/s so that they cannot from this vantage point tell which is present, which is future, which is past. Are we receding or arriving and if either to what point. Is this the defender of age and experience over the righteous anger of youth, or a progenitor of times collapse.

But time past and future notwithstanding, the central singular individual (or indeed singularity) at which our eyes are focussed plays another role. Is this the figure outside of time, the eternal figure that may answer the question that has been around since the idea of God was first implanted? What are you, my God? asked St Augustine(2) this image answers that question. But it also denies the possibility of access to what is revealed. For, whilst we may see the very incarnation of God, yet we cannot look into the eyes of God, through our failings we are still cast from Eden, the viewer found wanting is thus rejected, the impossibility of a true knowledge of God is returned.

(1)
“I read in the eyes of those young men the divine smile of triumph of an ideal” Benito Mussolini – Thus we took Rome from My Autobiography (1924)

(2)
Quid es ergo, dues meus?
Summe, optime
potentissime, omnipotentissime,
secretissime et praesentissime,
pulcherrime et fortissime,
stabilis et incomprehensibilis,
immutabilis mutans omnia,
numquam novus numquan vetus

What are you, my God?
Most high, most good,
most potent, most omnipotent,
most hidden and most present,
most beautiful and most strong,
stable and incomprehensible
immutable and ever changing
never new, never old. - St Augustine

Shopping the Abject

Another swimming lesson to attend, another 45 mins of outdoor creation.


The theme for this second ‘art’ installation is the discourse inherent in negotiating relationships within the context of an anti-historical present.

The piece consists of the placement/arrangement of 3 trolleys (shopping carts). The trolleys have been removed from the delineated and discrete lanes (aisles) of the supermarket and placed within a ‘natural’ environment. In this way we can negotiate their purpose without the contextual situation of commercial space. We thus can now truly see the trolley as both signifier and totem.

The trolleys have been positioned and imaged three times.

The first image of standing trolleys represents the commodification of relationships removed as they are in the West from familial or community control and historical procreational purpose. The trolleys placed in a line symbolise the commerce that is concomitant with love. We shop with our conceptual trolleys browsing society with our mental lists of desired attributes (some ours some inherited) searching for the partner commodity. When we perceive the symbolic trolley is filled, we then negotiate the emotional price and freedom we are prepared to lose/pay. The commodity purchased can thus replace/negate a self lived life and create an artificial human value (price), the exchange also potentially unequal.

The trolleys upturned represent the rejection of the commodity principle and of the necessity of competing in a denatured environment. In the prone position the trolleys are unable to be filled purposefully with the commodity we may want, but are left open for nature to fill with the potentially abject. Pushed over, the trolleys are in a ‘state of nature’ where our ‘logical’ expectations can ‘fall out’ and the fundamental elements of nature may grow around/within/thru subsuming the inorganic back into the organic. But this is also a representation of decay, the destruction of civilisation, and in essence a return to a brute master/servant scenario as opposed to the current purchaser/provider model. Thus we are given the question, if the present is unequal and the past problematic, then how may we transcend the future.

The third image wherein the trolleys have been physically removed (but the idea of trolleys is still present) represents the absence and distance inherent in the impossibility of a real knowledge of a creator god.

car trouble

So whilst daughter #2 had a swimming lesson in Kambah, I made a temporary installation (just off Jenke circuit, for those Canberra bound).

The theme is the relationship between inert nature and progress.

The tire is the perfect exemplar of the liberation made possible by tapping into the earth’s energy and resources. The tire represents a dualism within modernity it is both made from oil products, but is also part of /driven by (motivated) a motor car which also runs on oil products. It is round, it contains within its shape a moving dynamism, it flows, as does its composite parts, it also allows for the moving (backwards and forwards) of associated parts to which it is affixed. It is the modern precondition of a wheel, we cannot say a wheel rim contains the function of circle or round, it is the tire which completes and defines the movement made possible by transport.

The situation of the tires – that is removed from their normal set quadrilateral situation – is linear, the far tire not receding but both becoming and dissolving.

The tires have been positioned three times.

The first image contains four tires (the number for a standard car) lying down. The positioning in this state implies a lack of dynamism, the absence of a car indicates the nullification of purpose or in fact a negation of the possibility of movement. In this position indeed the tires represent nothing so much as a set of holes. Holes that reach beyond the tires and point us back into the ground/earth from which both we and the tire materials came.

The tires standing signify movement, the tire is caught in the process of movement, our gaze has stilled them for a brief period, but we know if we look away they will roll away as if involuntary, so instilled within their self/ image is the idea of movement. The tire in its standing position also represents the dynamic progress of humans, constantly evolving and shaping the environment.

The final image, of a singular tire, within through which we can see further tires shows us the possibility of love.

In case you are unsure of where still, it's between the two strips of trees across from the street name and building (pool).