AN ANGEL IN THE SWAMP
How to resist to the process of degradation implemented by the extravagances of politics and the brutal disturbances of financial speculation? As citizens of the present, we are the heirs of this machine of production that has become total and omnipresent; not just capitalism but world-spread and excessive capitalism that has transformed every single domain of life into markets. Unlimited accumulation and its corollary, the missing/search of pleasure have become the panacea. First World societies - such as here in Australia - where pleasure is simultaneously an obligation and a subject of anxiety, doesn’t capitalism feed itself on this consumerist motivation par excellence? One which is constituted by the quest for satisfactions endlessly renewed since they are always unfulfilled.
The body - coveted object of greed - like the rest, has been degraded, turned into merchandise and stretched beyond any recognisable limits. Overused and abused as it is, the body is nonetheless the conveyor of this morbid duet consumption/deception. With these images, i counter-document the manufactured – however consented – enduring corruption of an anatomy, as a way of keeping in mind that the body, in its most bare form, has always been the vector of untamed innocence, insubordination and natural beauty.
© Christophe Stibio August 2017
