Curators Chloe Geoghegan and Ted Whitaker developed this proposal during the 2015 Curatorial Intensive in New York. The proposal later became the exhibition The False Demographic at Blue Oyster, Dunedin, New Zealand, on view from October 7 – October 31, 2015.
The call to “design your own flag” aligns with New Zealand’s proud DIY culture, a want for modern democracy and an exacerbation of our wry antipodean humour. Exploring an alternative voice within the mainstream flag debate, The False Demographic reflected the diverse potential of socio-political dialogue within art practice. Questioning the debate as an automatic discussion, Robert Carter’s installation ‘The Voice of Authority II’ (2015) embodied and distorted the forceful nature of political dialogue. Enclosed by a border of quiet but invasive Kikuyu grass, Stella Corkery’s painting ‘Ears Burning’ (2015) and Brendan Jon Philip’s drawing series ‘Stateless Vexilla’ (2015) explored the indeterminacy of NZ’s sometimes post-global society. Prague based Czech artist Ondřej Vicena’s installation ‘I saw how tourist view burnt a spoon’ (2015) intersects the gallery space; hyperreality and reality interweave to offer a much-needed viewpoint from the outside looking in.
Alongside these works were nearly forty interactive responses from a constructed ‘demographic’, which formed a curatorial architecture for the exhibition and perhaps also a reverse-public programme whereby the exhibition audience could access a pre-existing discussion around the exhibition, in the exhibition. By presenting these responses from a range of different voices we asserted an alternative flag debate in order to explore some of the more complex issues the referendum process inadvertently exposed. We asked our demographic: what does the referendum mean to Aotearoa’s largely apolitical and globalised youth? How does it affect the current nature of post-colonial dialogue? Is New Zealand the perfect sized soapbox for political empowerment or disempowerment? Does the referendum consider the ‘otherness’ that many if not most New Zealanders identify with? Isolated geographically to the rest of the world and living in a destination country (unless en route to Antarctica) demands an outward perspective, which The False Demographic sought to do through a discursive framework.
Learn More
To learn more about this proposal please email Chloe Geoghegan at director@blueoyster.org.nz. To learn more about the Curatorial Intensive email info@curatorsintl.org.
