Survival Kit for the Anthropocene – TRAILER

Survival Kit for the Anthropocene – TRAILER is conceived as a set of equipment for survival in apocalyptic situation, while at the same time addressing the process of disappearance of local cultures and economies in the grip of global neoliberal economics. The latter is often presented as a neutral, almost natural occurrence that shares one feature in particular with nature – a mechanism for the brutal survival of the fittest. Mobile kit for survival which connects contemporary technology with folklore, is a hybrid between a beehive and the Slovenian peasant chest. The small figures drawn at the exterior reminiscent of folk ornamentation, featuring species that are becoming increasingly widespread and invasive in the local territory: Japanese knotweed, giant hogweed, zebra mussels and harlequin ladybugs. The egg-like form is basically a water reservoir with impregnated pig bladders, into which water flows, through water filters, along a bamboo tube. It ́s materials connect an indigenous flax rope and pig bladders with the invasive acacia and bamboo. Drawers contain the basic tactical tools, combined by the attached wooden two-pronged pitchfork with detachable mesh that can be used according to the situation and therefore serve as an umbrella, fish trap, pitchfork or a crossbow. The spirit of the survival kit presentation is supported by the artist’s poem The Anthropocene Manifesto written in the «invasive» English language. The project is a paraphrase to the vanishing cultures and local economies that are dissolving in the pool of contemporary neoliberal capitalism, and a critique of mainstream ecology that is “solving” climatic change within the global neoliberal framework, therefore within the existing capitalist paradigms, in which corporations are only being strengthened through tax havens with each passing day.