Bunker Rulz 6: The myth of inevitable progress underpins colonizing domination and theft. The Colony proports that injustice - slavery, invasion, extraction, profiteering - is essential for the progress of civilization.
When confronted with the inevitability of our global situation we can either come to terms with our loss and our involvement, or double down on excusing our denial. Bargaining becomes an avoidance to face justice, reality, death. We beg, we doubt, we petition higher forces, appeal to our superstitious selves, offer deals to our demons, ask for redemption if we promise to behave… Imagined as rational, linear, enlightened thoughts these thinly disguised blame narratives are sticky: Why me, pick on someone else, it is not my fault, I have done so much good, we’d be living in caves without progress, at least we brought civilization… And there it is, survival of the normalised supremacist thinking, no mention of the damage, no curiosity for the incredible wisdom of other cultures, a lineal jump to the thought ship that is sinking us all.
How do we represent our bargains with power and privilege?
What does the past, present and future look like when we define time as a linear force of nature, the harbinger of inevitable progress? What is time? Why do we imagine it runs in a straight line, when it is a fickle experience, that warps with our emotions? What stories do we share about the success of civilization? Whose stories do we omit? Who benefits from maintaining domination?
How do we reframe success and a life well lived?
Marking Time
Marking Time is a 25m long, suspended illustrated paper ‘victory’ spiral. Illustrations of enlightened empire mark the spiralling timeline of colonization, like a scratched calendar on Plato’s prison wall, checking off promises of humanity’s success while delivering sustained inhumanity and racist cruelty. In collaboration with Clyde Rigney Jnr and other artists, text, slogans and cartoons will cover the work, to reclaim our shared cultural stories and offer a myriad of lived resistance.
Provocateurs corner: In the name of inevitable progress we trade in poisoned comfort, claiming civilization’s achievement as leverage against the mountainous pile of corpses, the escalating true costs of enlightenment: Slavery, genocide, plunder, rape and destruction on a planetary scale, offering the wonders of civilization to the very few.
Creative concept, development and curators: Jen Lyons-Reid & Carl Kuddell
Installation: Jen Lyons-Reid & Carl Kuddell, Felix Weber
Text: Jen Lyons-Reid & Carl Kuddell, Clyde Rigney Jnr
Cartoons: Jen Lyons-Reid
Poetry: Poets tba
Photos: Change Media
Venues: Signal Point Gallery Goolwa. You can spot a sneal preview of Marking Time at Coral St Artspace Victor Harbor.