Survival Kit For The Anthropocene
2014
"Survival Kit for the Anthropocene - Trailer" installation is designed as an openly disassembled mobile survival kit. Formally it connects contemporary art with folklore and is a hybrid between a beehive and a Slovenian farm chest, whose egg shape asociates with the symbol of life.
Its exterior in the spirit of the folk ornament is adorned with images of - in the Slovene region increasingly invasive species: Fallopia japonica, Heracleum mantegazzianum, Dreissena polymorpha and Harmonia axyridis.
The kit, intertwined of an autochthonous flax rope and pig bladders with invasive acacia and bamboo is basically a water collector with impregnated pig bladders in which water flows through the water filters through a bamboo tube. The drawers contain basic aids for the apocalypse: from the radioactivity indicator, iodine tablets to the protective mask. Two-tiered wooden pitchfork with a removable wooden net is attached at the top and can serve as a shade or a fish net, a pitchfork or a crossbow.
Above: The Anthropocene Manifesto
The mobile survival kit serves as a paraphrase of disappearing cultures and local economies that dissolve in the pool of modern capitalism, as well as a critique of ecology as an ideology that "solves" climate change within global neoliberal frameworks, therefore within the existing capitalist paradigms. The latter are often portrayed as a neutral, natural phenomenon, which is primarily associated with nature through one stroke - the mechanism of the brutal survival of the most powerful ones.
Author: Maja Smrekar
Production: Aksioma Institute
In collaboration with:
Architecture and design concept: Andrej Strehovec. u.d.i.a.
Embroidery: Alenka Gašperin
Execution: ScenArt d.o.o.
Thanks: Jože Zajc. Tanja Drašler, Marija Smrekar, Željko Strunjak, Darko Vugrinec, Mesni butik ,"PIGI"
Supported by: The Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Slovenia, The Ljubljana City Council — Cultural Department
Premiered: Aksioma Gallery, Ljubljana. Slovenia