PURE WAR

“Most oppression succeeds because its legitimacy is internalized.”

                                                                            - Chomsky

Capitalism as an economic model is in limbo, Globalization as an industrial method has become a virulent chimera, and Democracy as an ideal has become a clinically distilled and refined form of mediated war; all contributing to a present, omnipresent ‘Xeno-colonialism’. The Occident has long since arrived at a situation that is more than simply 'pure surface', or quasi-religious ‘pure image’; it is to all intensive purposes a calculated systemization and institutionalisation of war. In short,  ‘pure war'.

From a western perspective, the term ‘we’ in itself suggests hegemony. We are dealing with a particular brand of Colonialism, a peculiar form of voyeurism that moves beyond the ‘endo-‘ and the ‘exo-‘ as Virilio would place it. Within such a paradigm it is no longer about the interior or the exterior in the Orwellian sense, or the inside versus the outside in the context of Derrida’s writings. The center has engulfed the edge, arguing Foucault, echoing Fanon, so much so that ‘Pata-‘ and ‘Meta-‘ don’t even feature anymore. This is where the ‘Proto-‘, ‘Post-‘ and ‘Neo-' exchange meanings as freely as the terms Promiscuity and Proximity suggest ‘freedom’ or ‘liberation’. Pure war delivers a rhizomatic, duplicitous ‘Xeno-‘ state; ambiguous and ubiquitous in its schizophrenic drive for wealth and power.

“A comfortable, smooth, reasonable, democratic unfreedom prevails in advanced industrial civilization, a token of technical progress.”

                                                                             - Marcuse

Captain Post-Exotic & the Xeno-Colonialists is a parody, depicting a future dictated by this Xeno-state, governed by age-old buzz words now developed into institutionalized ideologies and philosophies, such as Postmodernism, Simulacra, the Sublime, the Society of the Spectacle, the Global Village, the Panopticon, and the like; all imploded, mangled within the wreckages of each other’s meanings, histories, identities, pluralities, multiplicities, representations, geographies and/or any other over-used, misinterpreted, and diluted phrases known to contemporary thought. By this measure, such terms can be associated with the exact voyeurism and opportunism they claim to deflect and/or reflect, creating an ulterior voyeurism, simultaneously playing with and against the term ‘Exotic’. Pop and Punk merge at this juncture, and the interplay between the two seemingly opposing genre’s suggests the erasure of both futurism and historicism, leading to the total eradication of difference and henceforth culture, where only the palimpsest remains as the closest analogue to authenticity.

The first published image of Captain Post-Exotic & the Xeno-Colonialists, featured in issue #27 of Ijusi magazine, shows archetypal figures – the Scientist, the Dictator, the Accountant – set within a barren landscape, long since colonised, its resources depleted, its people extinct, its spirit drained. Yet, Man, ‘his’ technology, and ‘his’ Will to Power are still present. Purposefully, a sense of both Historification and Futurism are present by virtue of absence.  The image seems old and dated, yet the subject matter looks as if it is set in the future. The image itself is not authentic, made of multiple images taken from a variety of random sources on the Internet, bearing no direct source or origin, no original space or place from whence it was taken.  Captain Post-Exotic & the Xeno-Colonialists is a total simulation, an absolute image depicting Pure War.

This ideological displacement and temporal disorientation can also be linked to the current measures that are being undertaken in South Africa, on behalf of the government and multi-national corporations, to begin fracking in the Karoo desert, which is feared to destroy one of the country’s most treasured landscapes. In the published Ijusi version of Captain Post-Exotic & the Xeno-Colonialists, which was set within the context of a Vinyl album cover, there is an image on the LP label of Chairman Mao waving goodbye as he waves hello. This is a hint towards the South African governments corporate interests, and the strong ties it has with China. But this sentiment cannot only be localized to South Africa alone, and that is what Captain Post-Exotic & the Xeno-Colonialists stands for: bringing to light the disenfranchisement of a massive underclass of poor people around the world, with indifferent Governments servicing multinational corporations whose only intent it is to meet the needs of the world’s wealthy, ultimately to the detriment of the environment and the planet. 

“Civilization has ceased to be that delicate flower which was preserved and painstakingly cultivated in one or two sheltered areas of a soil rich in wild species […] Mankind has opted for monoculture; it is in the process of creating a mass civilization, as beetroot is grown in the mass. Henceforth, man's daily bill of fare will consist only of this one item.”

                                                                                        - Levi-Strauss

______________________________________________________
Captain Post-Exotic & the Xeno-Colonialists forms part of a larger body of work titled “Pure-War”. An edition of this image is currently being exhibited as part of a group show titled “The Path Less Deconstructed” hosted by M. Contemporary in Sydney, Australia.