Themes

To paraphrase the poet John Donne, no one is an island, entire of itself; everyone is a piece of the continent, a part of the main1. While this may be true, in our globalised, creative field there is often a desire to be distinct, to be different. In a world dominated by the ideology of individualism, how is a sense of community redefined?

In order for life to thrive it must exist in perfectly balanced conditions. That our planet hosts the correct combination of light, carbon, water and atmosphere is nothing short of a miracle. In the billions of years since its inception, life on earth has maintained a symbiotic relationship with its habitat but the effects of the Anthropocene’s climate crisis threaten this stability. Could we have finally run out of luck?

In J.G. Ballard’s Crash1 the body is manifested in two forms; the warm malleable flesh of the human and the cold, hard metal of the vehicle. Over the course of this staggering novel the two become entwined in a transgressive dance, skidding across the typical boundaries of sexual encounters. We are confronted by the potential for a techno-corporeal world which begs the question; can the body be more than we imagine?

When categorising galaxies there are three known shapes; ellipticals, spirals and irregulars. Irregulars are so named because there is little understanding of why they occur. These visually chaotic constellations keep us guessing about the true meaning of the great unknown. How can we start to think beyond when we have so little grasp of that before us?