At Most Dismal Swamp’s new exhibition “The Bastard Fields” at the Bacon Factory, facilitated by the Autotelic Foundation. On view until December 14th.
Inside a cave, a decaying skeleton is deep in conversation with a strange looking robot with visible gears in its head, dressed in activewear. “Submit to the singularity”. It goes black and “The sound of something unnecessary intensifies”. PVC clad women in a streaming studio sit between a man in an animal mask: “I love you, but what foxhole are you running?” One of them demands as he then climbs into a box.
“Go to your cell, your cell will teach you everything”. The livestream of a man in a rabbit mask segues into a manic preacher in a decaying cloth mask in a darkened room, frantically delivering a sermon. We zoom out again as the original skeleton, a bog body, traverses a harsh but beautiful natural landscape across cliffs and hillside to the sound of discordant guitar. This loops back to the beginning. Where are we?
The beauty of this world that’s been created is you can feel your way through it and arrive at your own meaning. The characters from the middle section feels like a cycle of content that’s being made but constantly degrading from some strange source, framed by the skeleton representing humanity being replaced by the robot. They look to represent online worlds and communities where we now have “model collapse” which is reinforced by the singularity mentioned before ie where technological growth accelerates beyond human control. You can feel the elements in the sodden rainswept outdoor locations where we see the bog and the human merging. The blend of mediums used reinforces this too with its combination of real world locations and unreality engines. The tension between the two worlds and their bleeding into one another.
We caught up with its creator Dane Sutherland afterwards. He mentioned that one of the starting points for this work was the “Covenanters”, who were a religious group in Scotland who had to hide in caves and the countryside in order to practice what they believed in but whilst not doing any harm. Sound familiar to the situation we are faced with today? Parallels between the Palestine situation and the trans community abound. The Bogs that we see framing the piece come from the environment of these Covenanters. Not only did they start to blend with the land but the bogs were screens for what they believed in too. They come to represent not only humanity and nature but also then how safe spaces in real life and online are being invaded and infiltrated.
The piece entitled “All the way down” seems to reflect this. The preacher could be a reflection of Society’s veneration of influencers peddling warped views and beyond. But it could also be someone having to hide for expressing their views. Which version do we believe? The cloth mask is frightening in how is takes on a loosely human degraded form. There is a real-life version of it on display too which is even more impressive, as it looks to embody a warped but decaying human form. Again this mask has a real world starting point. One of the leading figures of the aforementioned Covenanters, Alexander Peden, would use this mask as a disguise so as not to get caught and arrested for expressing his views…
You can watch The Bastard Fields and think if it as a fever dream, but it is almost more of a prescient marker, a warning of where things are heading. It deserves your attention. Will we take heed? As the end of the movie says:
“As a dog returns to its vomit. So a fool returns to its foolishness”.
Credits:
Venue: Bacon Factory by Autotelic Foundation / @autotelic_foundation
Artist: Most Dismol Swamp / @most_dismal_swamp
Words: Jamie Macleod Bryden / @jamiemacleodbryden
Editor: Maria Abramenko / @mariabramenko
Etude Alba