“ONE OF THE FEW GOOD THINGS ABOUT MODERN TIMES: IF YOU DIE HORRIBLY ON TELEVISION, YOU WILL NOT HAVE DIED IN VAIN. YOU WILL HAVE ENTERTAINED US.”
— Kurt Vonnegut, “Cold Turkey,” In These Times, May 10, 2004
FOW ER TOO 42
— military call sign of 42
In The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams, the civilization created a super-computer DEEP THOUGHT to discover the meaning of life. It took 7.5 million years, and the produced answer was FORTY TWO. They have forgotten what the question was.
These descriptions of Modern Times are key references for Michael Morgan’s new work Symbiotic Illusion. It examines the nostalgic glorification of conflict in contemporary societies compartmentalised within their biased geographical, cultural, religious, ethnic and ideological spaces. The authors of Bhagavad-Gita would never comprehend modern day philosophers’ awareness of digitised destruction such as drone killing televised in our lounge room, while eating dinner.
Humanity considers that “symbiosis” is the ideal, an idea of mutual benefit. However, humans are far from being able to adopt symbiotic relationships.
Symbiotic Illusion is a large scale sculptural installation that features enclosed environments. Both “natural” and artificial (plastic and ice head casts, water, ceramic figurines, LED lights, air pumps contained in fish tanks) — these environments portray illusions and the escape of meaning through temporarily sustained transitory formations of life which, regardless of their agenda, are the subject of the nature’s progression.
TELEMATIC CAFE 