Exhibition Review: 'SHTF' for firstdraft Gallery, Woolloomooloo

This article was originally published for the Critical Arts Journal 'Framework'.

Many of Salvador Dali’s works were consumed by a fascination with paranoia. His ‘Paranoid Critical Transformation Method’, which used relatively new Freudian psychology at the time, soon became what we now know as surrealist art. The works were innately hallucinatory, self-obsessive in subject matter and produced without the aid of drugs or neuro-divergent conditions.

Today, extreme survivalism might be of modern equivalence. Known often as ‘doomsday preppers’, they externalise their neuroses to focus on a world they feel to be always ‘on the brink’.

Geopolitical uncertainty, environmental destruction, the worry of crumbling financial institutions and the potential for religious armageddons are just some of the fears preppers obsess over most.

People in prepper cultures find themselves on constant alert, readying themselves for when shit-hits-the-fan’ or ‘SHTF’. Some collect particular objects, others resort to more extreme methods, isolating themselves from society entirely. For many, it’s a community and culture rooted in weapon fascination.

But regardless of whatever method or fear preppers focus on, they seem to share a need for order. For Guy Louden, Loren Kronemeyer and Dan McCabe, the artists behind Firstdraft’s September exhibition about preppers called ‘SHTF’, they have called the subculture, ‘the spirit of our times[ES1] ’(Kronemeyer, McCabe & Louden, 2017).

The aesthetic of prepper culture is strictly utilitarian. Dan McCabe’s piece, FirstLite (2017) - made from automotive carbon ber vinyl, oxidized ‘gun- blued’ steel and stainless steel - evokes this aesthetic immediately. His other work, ‘Alpha, Bravo, Charlie, Delta’ (2017) also creates a sense of militancy prominent within the culture of preppers[ES2] . Knives-displays in one corner of the room show casual weapon-use, whilst meticulously tied ropes fastening many of the pieces are used in many of the works.

Loren Kronemyer’s works, ‘Mangle, Strangle, Dangle V (2017)’ and ‘VI’ (2017), are undoubtedly the two centrepieces of the exhibition, perhaps if only due to their sheer size and scale. She has created two life-sized booby traps.

‘V’ is a suspended rope dangling a torso-sized piece of stone. It hangs only inches above the average height of a person. ‘VI’ is a readied composite bow and arrow, fastened by zip ties and cinderblocks. It points directly at the wall opposite on the left side of the exhibition room, where three arrows have already been struck. And yet, the wall is otherwise completely blank, containing nothing, and empty from any tangible or ‘real’ threat. The things prepper’s fear most almost always seems to be near, but resists ever being fully realised.

Individual responsibility for the booby traps is also absent. There appears to be no trace of a human mark, with the exception of an iPhone left at the site of each work. A further comment by Kronemyer perhaps, on how technology may be keeping us forever connected, yet simultaneously dislocated from one another. And more specifically, as is the case often in the eyes of a prepper, she might be hinting at newer modes of anxiety made possible by the aid of a saturated information age.

Guy Louden’s works are digital. He taps more into themes of playfulness and danger.

He has produced a series of giclee prints made from digital renders and a custom PC game called ‘What are you prepping for?’ A laptop screen loops a moving image of a park, resembling one in a city. It looks almost like a screensaver. The trees in the image are splintered by monochromatic grey triangles which hover overhead. It speaks of a disconnect of what modern survivalism looks like when enacted in an urban setting. Fractured, displaced and always on the move.

Propped up at the back of the exhibition, Louden’s invitation to explore the mentality of the prepper’s mind through gameplay might be even more fearful than Kronemyer’s overt weapon play.

The works all evoke the fear and anxieties experienced by an extreme survivalist’s always ‘ready’ mind. Reactive, sometimes violent, and always cautionary are the shared sentiments across all the pieces.

Differing from Dali’s standpoint, preppers invert former definitions of paranoia from being an inward exploration of a self-prescribed chaotic self, to being a worldview obsessed with finding control where chaos everywhere seems unavoidable.

Contained within the walls of the white cube, Kronemeyer, Louden and McCabe subvert the experiences of those who fear most to make a broader statement. They have successfully transformed what could only possibly be a contemporary sub-culture into a larger metaphor for our current climate.

The exhibition does less to present the sub-culture as a direct representation of the group, but rather, engages with you to think of preppers and their reactions as operating on a spectrum.

SHTF is a moment in time, a culture, but also an attitude. Unapologetic in approach, it emphasises a near-constant modern state of deliriousness and global sense of anxiety, applicable to almost anyone living in this moment.

The ‘brink’ might even be closer than we think.

‘SHTF’ exhibited at firstdraft Gallery in Woolloomooloo, Sydney in September.

Reference:

Kronemyer, L. Louden, G. & McCabe D. (20107) ‘SHTF Web Catalogue’, web.