Charcoal dust and "Regression"

For me this black powdery substance holds the meaning of "regression" or "mental reversion". Its broken down, crushed characteristics symbolizes ruin, destruction and disaster. I am comparing the ground state of the charcoal dust to the state of human minds after experiencing a great catastrophy such as a natural disaster. Both the charcoal and the collective individuals have been forced into a messy, hard to reform state. In both cases the basic make-up which makes charcoal and humans truely that has been destroyed, they are no longer like they where before. In this vunerable state they are both highly open to exploitation. Both charcoal and human minds can be crushed and ground.

Encirclement

A documentary exposing the characteristics of Neo-liberal ideology with the help of many renowned intellectuals. It shows the mechanisms used to enforce Neo-liberal polices throughout the world. Picking up on topics such as deregulation, reducing state control over the market place and privatization. An extremely insightful analysis and a stern look at one of todays biggest problems.

"The Shock Doctrine" - short film by Naomin Klein and Alfonso Cuaron

Neo-liberalism and "Free Markets" - Forcing radical economic policies through vacuums left by disaster

Performance/Drawing
Leeds College of Art and Design
Friday 27 November 2009, 10am - 4.30pm

‘Neoliberalism is the defining political economic paradigm of our time - it refers to the policies and processes whereby a relative handful of private interests are permitted to control as much as possible of social life in order to maximize their personal profit’ Noam Chomsky

‘Designed not only to exploit the resistant source’s internal conflicts and induce him to wrestle with himself but also to bring a superior outside force to bear upon the subjects resistance ....... all coercive techniques are designed to induce regression’ Kubark Counterintelligence Manual 1963

‘Shock and Awe are actions that create fears,dangers and destruction that are incomprehensible to the people at large, specific elements/sectors of the threat society, or the leadership. Nature in the form of hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes, floods, uncontrolled fires, famine and disease can engender Show and Awe’ Shock and Awe: Achieving Rapid Dominance, the military doctrine for the U.S war on Iraq

Surrounding me (the subject, interrogatee, country or population) is a seemingly unsoild boundary. A piled line of charcoal dust. This is infact an impenetratable wall, it is the embodiment of the great neoliberal force which is holding the economy hostage. The line of charcoal dust has many metaphorical meanings. One being that its crumbled, grinded texture has a similar state to the fragmented human mind during regression, also to the collective ground-down state of a country experiencing regression immediately after a disaster. Both have been crushed into a messy, hard to reform material which has become highly vunerable and open for exploitation. My attempts to communicate during my time of forced sensary deprivation are stutted and broken, showing the disorientation of both the individual and a whole nation experiencing an extreme catastrophy. This state of regression is the key feature under which neoliberal economics can proceed in forcing its radical polices. In the same way as the handing over of information during interrogation will not happen without regression. Throughout history this has been proven - without a chilean military coup Pinochet could not have forced through his neoliberal policies, without the Falklands war Thatcher could not have undergone her mass privatization agenda, without the terrorist attacks of September 11 the Bush administration could not have masked the privatization of the war under the facade of the ‘war on terror’.