(UN)CIVILIZATION

Modern civilisation’ feels like an oxymoron in an age where inhumanity seems to be more widespread than ever before. Within the broader culture of our civilisation, our sub-cultures can serve as havens from cruelty, but are sometimes also places of even more pressure. These pressures are applied in subtle and not so subtle ways within family, work or social groups.

We face a daily negotiation of the rules and structures within our sub-culture to ensure we fit somewhere in this civilisation. Combine that with our individual experience of our upbringing as well as a personalised relationship with social & corporate media and it becomes clear just how complex our environments are.

Privately, we have an ‘internal civilisation’ - ways we believe the world works, fits together and what refinement looks like. Publicly, it’s as if there’s a script and we’ve all agreed to act from it together. Even to rebel against it has a script-like feel. It has become increasingly difficult to identify non-essential behaviour proposed as essential by our sub-culture.

Part of the feeling we get from the grind of our specific sub-culture, is that we are helpless to break away from that grind. That we’re somehow trapped in it. We make all sorts of excuses not to have to think for ourselves or fight for a new way that would benefit us and ultimately others caught in this grind. We are held hostage by a culture to which we contribute. We take part in rituals that might ultimately exploit us.

In this collection of works, I’ve magnified or objectified objects in the way that the media or an advertising poster would. These are some of the pressures of my ‘internal civilisation’. These are things that make me wonder: how do you dismantle an internal civilisation without being irresponsible or undoing yourself?