Proboscis
from: Delta series
Found objects
860 x 280 x 60 mm
2021

In describing this work I will use, as a starting point, the press release written for my solo exhibition titled This is your world in which we grow, and we will grow to hate you. at Brodie/Stevenson in 2010.

The essay opened with this sentence –

Within the context of sub-Saharan Africa, my concern is to investigate the ways in which the newfound and existing exploitation of hydrocarbons is in many ways an extension of the colonial-era legacy of ‘mercantile capitalism’.

And concluded with this statement –

We live in a world where the future, most certainly, belongs to those of us willing to get our hands very dirty.

The exploitation of hydrocarbons has grown over the past 150 years into uniquely international commodities. They have allowed us, as a species, to use tomorrow’s energy to create 24 hours of sunlight, to grow astronomically in our capacity to produce food, technology, cities, wars and even more humans. The eleven years that followed my exhibition in 2010 have seen the Paris Climate Accords, numerous international conferences on climate, policy and legislation on industry best-practice and international cooperation as well as the annual Climate Change Conferences (COP), from COP17 through to the recent landmark, if compromised, COP26. All underwritten by a growing global acknowledgement that business as usual – centred on infinite growth targeting – is not only delusional but also suicidal. Yet on the ground at the cutting edge, literally, of resource extraction entirely different narratives have played out in contexts like Angola, Nigeria, Equatorial Guinea and recently formed South Sudan (2011). Where the complex and obdurate machinations of both daily life as well as macro-level socio-economics are defined, to large degrees, by this very "newfound and existing exploitation of hydrocarbons". Added to this list more recently is the dramatic escalation of insurgent activities in the Cabo Delgado region of Mozambique, following the single largest find of natural gas in the world since the North Sea fields in 1965. While in South Africa right now the revelations of Shell plc's seismic surveys along the Eastern Cape's Wild Coast play out in real-time. Environmental destruction not withstanding, having spent research time in several of these contexts, I cannot think of a worse socio-economic future for South Africa than the discovery of significant hydrocarbon deposits within our sovereign borders. An economic theory coined in 1982 by economists W. Max Corden and J. Peter – Dutch Disease, or the Curse of Plenty, describes and unpacks the relationship between the exploitation of natural resources and the attendant currency free-fall and devastation of domestic manufacturing, followed by systematic loss of employment and general societal decay. To describe such a future as a death sentence is, perhaps, also to say – if modern life is rubbish, and it's conceptual corollary; the future is stupid – what then is my position?

I have described in the past the idea of the African continent as being simultaneously conditioned – at a macro level – by two entwined processes; one extractive, the other additive. Export/Import. Firstly, that of industrial-scale natural resource extraction, largely for the benefit of Western commercial entities on the one hand. Secondly, the additive; which describes Africa as a dumping ground for imported ideologies (examples: Communism and Christianity); for imported technologies (examples: the AK-47 rifle and the internal combustion engine) – and as the continent has yet to experience an industrial revolution of it's own; for imported products and legal fictions (examples: cheap Chinese manufacturing and Roman-Dutch law). Such binaries are, in a sense, the maturation of the deeply problematic dual-mandate myth of the colonial era. And as to the causal relationship between modern life is rubbish and stupid future; I will focus on the cultural sphere – as opposed to the socio-economics just mentioned – while fully acknowledging the two are functions of one another. Much of global contemporary cultural production – from visual arts, to music, fashion and film – is disposable. Made in a rush, borne along by motivations that are overwhelmingly economic. The kinds of human productivity that are simply a function of market forces catering to a population of nearly 8 billion, sedated on infinite distraction.

Media. Entertainment. Stuff.
Fat and flour.

For me – as both a user and creator of this stuff – cultural consumption is much like driving (via an imported, petrol-powered combustion engine) through any mid-sized developing city. The vast majority of the buildings are generic, awkward copies of something else, either long forgotten, half remembered or conceited in their projection. Produced in a hurry to fulfil immediate needs, both real and imagined. This mass of visual noise that physically envelops us as architecture and urban design is mirrored within the ephemeral but somehow no less tangible realm of cultural production. Itself yet another vast sprawl of short-term human opportunism that stretches variously to a 3D-rendered or oil-painted horizon, depending on the target market. With the whole steaming heap underwritten by that bloated septic tank called the Internet.

Product piled on product. Forever.
Or until we finally kill this planet in the name of shareholder value.
But there is also a downside – imagine we stopped making all this stuff?