2 channel video installation, in 10 chapters, 480 min
Lisl Ponger on Vimeo
‘The calendar is made up of the past, for those at the top. So that it will stay that way, the powerful fill it up with statues, holidays, museums, homages, parades. That all serves the purpose of keeping the past in place; where things have already happened and not where they will happen,’ says Don Durito, a well-dressed, pipe smoking beetle from the Lacandon Maya jungle, who appointed Subcomandante Marcos of the Zapatista Liberation Army to be his shield bearer.
Statues, museums, famous people and important anniversaries are also found on stamps and first day covers, those small envelopes where the postal services of various nations celebrate them at various times and immortalise them all for the future.
Lisl Ponger made a collection of these envelopes with their colourful images, over a thousand of them which she uses to illustrate strands of the master narrative. They tell of the effects of the colonial project and its relevance to the present day, they talk of ethnological museums and their collections as well as of the influence of non-European objects on the visual arts, literature and film.
‘And so it will stay,’ says Don Durito, ‘until another calendar is written where it has to be written, namely below’.
We showed Chapter One at the KCAW in 2019. As part of the KCAW birthday celebrations, we’re reposting the link to Geoff Nicholson’s response.
