The supremacy of TINA has trapped us in a cocoon of instant consumption, convenient filter bubbles, disinformation and manufactured consent. When that bubble burst, how do we respond to the shock that our actions are destroying our world, causing oppression, extinction events, pandemics and climate catastrophes?

Shock is the sudden recognition that this is really happening. Shock brings disbelief and can make you question the nature of your reality. A shock to the system, a traumatic event, a face in the mirror that recognizes convenience got us hooked, that ignorance is not bliss.

How do we debunk the delusional stories that more is better? How is our privileged ignorance shaping our values and actions? How are our desires being manipulated? How do we speak back to these toxic trends, that zealously spread dis-information and alt-facts in the name of convenience?

How do we celebrate de-growth?

Trending, Lobethal Bushfire zone. Photo: Change Media

dreamcatchers
dreamcatchers are part of the Trending installation by Jen Lyons-Reid and Carl Kuddell. Fossilized plastic bags captured in resin are testaments to our addiction to fossil fuels. How do we debunk more is better and celebrate de-growth?

Trending. Bushfire zone. Photo: Change Media

Provocateurs corner: We want Trending to represent our tsunami of excess, the debris of our memories enshrined in plastic left behind by the coming storm. We increasingly live in a virtual world, yet every click, every view requires real bricks, mortar, energy, rare earth, plastic reality - a location on earth or in orbit. We need to see ourselves in the terrifying disasters of our making.

Trending: dreamcatcher and Lost Connection, Signal Point Gallery Goolwa, Jan 2021. Photo: Johanis Lyons-Reid

Credits

Creative concept, development and curators: Jen Lyons-Reid & Carl Kuddell

Sculpture: Jen Lyons-Reid, Carl Kuddell and Felix Weber

Provocations, text and cartoons: Jen Lyons-Reid & Carl Kuddell

Poetry: Poets tba

Photos: Change Media

Venues: Signal Point Gallery Goolwa. You can spot three of the fossilized dreamcatcher plastic bags on display at Coral St Artspace Victor Harbor until Nov 21, 2020.

dreamcatcher - Adelaide Fringe multmedia project 2007 February - SA

An art exhibition, public mobile video projection, provocative art interventions, a limited series of 20 unique resin sculptures and 2000 postcards competition across South Australia.

Marvel at the sheer beauty of a dancing plastic bag, the most ‘beautiful thing’ on a magical flight through the City of Adelaide. It twirls to a modern Pied Piper’s tune, peddling imperishable dreams and subtly transforms the City’s structures, leaving behind small icons of suburban utopia.

Dreamcatcher is testament to our capacity to see beauty in the mundane and dangerous, and just when you think its over, the bag lifts again, sporting its insignia: Eternity.

Dreamcatcher sculptures

Grotesque yet strangely alluring… Recent archaeological digs in Adelaide [code named dreamcatcher] have uncovered several petrified objects from an epoch which the Dreamcatcher Museum have classified as ‘Oil Age: Plastic Era’. The objects appear to be flimsy plastic vessels. Historians believe they were used for trade and exchange and were probably associated with human sacrifice and mass rituals.

The limited series of 20 unique sculptures, lusciously translucent and seductively textural, are made from plastic bags - stamped with Eternity - each manipulated and set in a large block of glassy resin, with its own custom made iron stand, labeled with the work’s edition number. 10 sculptures were publicly auctioned as part of the Adelaide Fringe 2007, raising funds for SA students clean up the beaches and remove plastic bags from the ocean.

If you are interested to buy one of the remaining artworks or want to exhibit the work, please email us

Commissioned for the Surface Tension Public Art Program of the Adelaide City Council and Australian Network for Art & Technology; as part of the 2006 Adelaide Fringe Festival.

Partners

Adelaide Fringe

Zero Waste SA

ANAT Surface Tension

Adelaide City Council

Trending

Collaborative art vs everyday supremacy thinking