Accidental Monsters of Meaning

I was at the WA Museum yesterday for a training session in my role as a volunteer for the upcoming AC/DC Family Jewels Exhibition when I noticed a curiously titled temporary exhibit, Accidental Monsters of Meaning. My curiosity was awakened especially when the description mentioned that it was a live-art performance. I did a double take in my mind and checked that I hadn’t entered the Art Gallery of WA by mistake.

Why would a museum have a live art installation anyway? Live art is a performance piece involving at least one artist which is treated as a work of art like a painting or sculpture would be. I haven’t seen one of these since my a childhood visit to the art gallery. My memories of that include a man in lycra flicking paint about creating a chaotic scene that confused even the art teacher. Or maybe she appeared confused because she wasn’t forthcoming with an explanation. It was all very weird and contemporary.

Upon entering the space for Accidental Monsters of Meaning, found that there was just enough light to navigate by. There were directed spotlights on five clear plastic boxes roughly the size of a family fridge. My revulsion for bottled water was justified in seconds on seeing the first piece, “P.E.T”. It was a box that was filled two thirds of the way with discarded empty plastic bottles that once contained water. I remember hearing a bubbling noise when the plastic bottles began to move. There was a girl in amongst the bottles. She wasn’t struggling, she was just there. Sometimes you would see her face flat against the glass, other times you would only see a hand. The room for more bottles and a moving being in the box was limited, much like the situation in reality.

The second piece was on a sense of happiness. This box was a little larger. The performer in the box had a set of headphones. The viewer was encouraged to wear a pair of headphones and press a series of unlabelled buttons which then played songs with the theme of happiness to which the performer would dance to. However, the only dance that I felt had the most emotion and was the most powerful was when I pushed a button and an alarm sounded without warning.

The performer was looking for a place out and looked distressed at the state of things. It was confronting to watch the performance given that it was only 30cm away from me. It wasn’t long until I pressed a “Happy” button again. In fact, that is what most people did. No one wanted to be part of the negative situation and didn’t know what else to do other than to provide a quick fix. The “Sad” button was still there for someone else to press. It was just too uncomfortable.

In the third box there was a “Human Buying”. She was having a conversation while building towers from empty boxes of well known items. Initially the conversation made no sense. It took a few minutes of watching her build yet another collapsible tower did I begin to make some sort of sense of it. Everything that she was saying was an advertising slogan. Everything. It wasn’t supposed to make sense but yet it sounded familiar. I couldn’t help but think if humanity was wiped out that the most enduring messages might very well be advertising slogans. They are repeated frequently each day and then people often perform a word play on them to get a message across.

The fourth box was peculiar. There was a performer that had images of consumer waste projected onto the space. There were shopping bags, PET plastic water bottles, televisions, cigarettes, and something that looked like buckets. We may wish to think that our individual purchases are not resulting in landfill when our rubbish bins are emptied. The wrapper of a lollipop may not be much to look at but what about 5,000 of them or even 1 million? Where do you put it all?

The fifth and final box was titled “The Disappearance” and had video of the arctic ice projected onto the torso of the performer moving in silence. No words are needed to describe what this exhibit piece was about. Everyone was just silent watching.

At a time when the reasoned words of the scientific community are being scorned by a vocal and noisy minority, Accidental Monsters of Meaning presents the biggest failings of humanity wordlessly and passionately while confronting the senses. As a matter of survival of a species, it is time to start acting to prevent our own extinction.

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