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 a neo-liberalist 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. In “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 satisfaction endlessly renewed since it is always unfulfilled.
Like the rest, the body - coveted object of greed - has been degraded and turned into merchandise. 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 – manifest corruption of our anatomy, as a way of keeping in mind that the body, in its bare form, has always been the vector of untamed innocence, insubordination and natural beauty.
© Christophe Stibio August 2017
