Bunker Rulz 7: Normalize blame. Our shared stories define our past, present and future. The Colony propagates cultural norms and offers belonging as a reward if you fit in and threatens brutal exclusion if you don’t.
Blame is a tricky concept, we use it as a tool that might help clarify a situation, but mostly it is an excuse to transfer responsibility or guilt, individually and collectively. Who to blame next?
In a social frame, blaming or scapegoating others requires seductive stories about belonging, We are the Chosen Ones; a decree by DNA, wealth, race, gender, ability, nation, belief. The repetition of these fabricated stories reinforce the notion of normality, a very narrow set of cultural rules, ways to be and act. And voila, the chosen one’s can now offer a binary, fake choice: In or out, Us vs Them, be with or against us, you decide, we react. We have a sanctioned and repeatable blame frame.
Normality is a construct that rewards the privileged and oppresses the rest. Oppression (racism, sexism, ableism etc) has a purpose, the ongoing privileging of the few. Our cultural stories hide this inequality as normality. If we fit in, we belong, we are rewarded, we deserve it, we have the right to decide who comes and who stays. They just need to do what we do, or they brought it on themselves…
Belonging becomes a competitive process, earned by compliance to its norms, with super-power-unfair-advantage rigged access - and relies entirely on our silence and complicity about the use of brutal oppression. Ironically, human rights only were legislated once privileged white folk reacted to the genocide of people they related to. But since their universal declaration in 1948, global inhumanity, slavery and colonial destruction continues. Does mob might make right?
How do we resist scapegoating?
If our shared stories define our past, present and future, who decides who is included or excluded? How do we blame the targeted for being excluded? Who benefits from silencing diversity? How do we erase the 99% in our cultural stories? How do we value diversity? What can't we afford to imagine?
How do we come to terms?
Contested Space is a collaboration between Jen Lyons-Reid, Carl Kuddell, Ngarrindjeri artist Cedric Varcoe and Ngarrindjeri cultural advisor and writer Clyde Rigney Jnr, that focuses on visualizing the attempted erasure of Indigenous Australians.
500 painted concrete shrouds hover in silence, futures erased by colonialization, past relationships etched inside, to instigate a dialogue between the dead and the living. The assembly floats like a fleet of sails, evoking the nightmare of invasion. A heavy presence stranded in time, the concrete death masks demand we bear witness and consider how we will commemorate genocide in Australia.
Provocateurs corner: Walk among the 500 and acknowledge the 438 recorded Aboriginal deaths in custody since 1989. This is a large gathering of people deemed expendable, killed by the ongoing colonial ‘duty of care’ that created ‘The Aboriginal problem’. Engage with each mask and contemplate they also represents the deaths and killings not ‘recorded’, and imagine the unfathomable grief of genocide.
Cedric Varcoe has painted cultural patterns, designs and prison-wall etchings inside, sharing his personal story of imprisonment, the incarceration and deaths of his brothers, intergenerational absence and belonging. Some masks have strong connections, others have vanished, assimilated, targeted daily, some scream ‘I can’t breathe’, here, now, in this contested space.
The physical absence signifies our collective loss and a hollowness of humanity, as the majority of Australians appear to be comfortable with these ongoing deaths on our watch.
What do we need to do to ensure this systemic violence and societal silence stops now?
Credits
Curators: Jen Lyons-Reid & Carl Kuddell
Creative concept and development: Jen Lyons-Reid, Carl Kuddell, Cedric Varcoe, Clyde Rigney Jnr
Installation: Jen Lyons-Reid & Carl Kuddell, Cedric Varcoe, Clyde Rigney Jnr, Felix Weber
Sculpture: Jen Lyons-Reid & Carl Kuddell
Painting: Cedric Varcoe
Essay + Cultural advice: Clyde Rigney Jnr, Ngarrindjeri Namawi Co
Photos: Change Media, Peta Doherty and Sam Roberts
Video: SBS and Change Media
Venues: Fabrik Arts + Heritage Lobethal, Nov 6 - Dec 5 2020, and Signal Point Gallery Goolwa, Dec 11 - January 26 2021.
