Searching for Solidity in the Midst of Crisis, Collapse, Instability and Insincerity

Abstract

The ground on which we walk lacks solidity. So much so that at times it feels as if it does not exist. The world is ending. We are possibly even past the end. Each room entered is filled with smoke and mirrors. Each day we try to make sense of the senseless and are never short of worries. Some are more comfortable living in a haze, using ignorance as a dangerous coping mechanism. Others are unable to switch off the worries of the world and the worries flowing through their bloodstream. The earth spins faster than we do, leaving its inhabitants breathless and empty in a constant flurry to keep up to speed. The present is over-caffeinated and over-energised. Pumped with steroids and adrenaline. Streams of content flow at lightspeed. Digital space is no longer distinct from physical space. Digital content is all over, above, beneath, beside and through. Its particles spread at pace and in great volume into our oversaturated and overstimulated world. Structures that perhaps once appeared sturdy have revealed their poor frameworks and foundations. Who and what can be truly trusted in this age of falsified information, dishonesty, simulation and edited reality? Institutions betray their supposed ideals. Promises are broken. The outrageous becomes fact. Everything feels on the brink of breakage. Four terms underlie this text and helped it come into fruition: world, self, object and hope. This is a research document that holds the immediate everyday close. It was written in Mt Eden, in Samoa House Library on Karangahape Road, in the notes of my phone while walking through city space, and in the Fine Arts Library, Te Herenga Toi at the University of Auckland. The words that follow were used to think through, and slow down the tempo of the world, just as the objects made in my studio do. The words and the objects support one another and have grown tangentially. The titles Face to Face with a Tidal Wave, Floating Falling Flying Flailing, Fearful Navigations, Freshly Painted, Finding each other, and Forward motion are a framework that words flow through, beginning by identifying the reality of the world at present, considering the role of art in affecting meaningful change, and ending with a hopeful imagining of the future, emphasising the value and necessity of community, closeness and open dialogue. More questions are asked than are answered. This is not definite and rigid, it is a pause. It is a caught breath.