The Legacy of Lesser Gods

Author Presley, Ryan John

Published 2016

Thesis Type Thesis (PhD Doctorate)

School Queensland College of Art

DOI https://doi.org/10.25904/1912/3894

Copyright Statement The author owns the copyright in this thesis, unless stated otherwise.

Downloaded from http://hdl.handle.net/10072/367360

Griffith Research Online https://research-repository.griffith.edu.au THE LEGACY OF LESSER GODS

Ryan Presley BFA with Honours (1st class) Queensland College of Art, Griffith University

Queensland College of Art School of Arts, Education and Law Griffith University

Submitted in fulfilment of the requirements of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy

April 2016

Ryan Presley – The Legacy of Lesser Gods

Statement of Original Authorship

The work contained in this thesis has not been previously submitted to meet requirements for an award at this or any other higher education institution. To the best of my knowledge and belief, the thesis contains no material previously published or written by another person except where due reference is made.

Signature:

Date: 28/10/2016

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Abstract

This project highlights deeply embedded links between religion, economics, and power in colonial societies of the ‘West’, with a particular focus on Australia. Archival imagery and historical texts are examined to demonstrate the negative influences of particular monotheistic ideas and notions of supremacy. It is argued that these prevailing views have been adopted in the global propagation of Christian faith over many centuries. The imagery is paired with historical examples that demonstrate a conversion mentality that aimed to control any alternative practices of divine worship and associated culture. The legacy is then brought to bear on the contemporary treatment of Australian Aboriginal people.

These themes of power and dominion—in particular, how religion and economic control served colonialism and empire building over time—have become the foundation for the primary outcomes expressed through the studio production. The creative outputs of my doctoral research include a major installation entitled Lesser Gods and associated exhibition projects, which will be discussed and analysed in this exegesis.

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Acknowledgements

I would like to acknowledge and thank my supervisors Pat Hoffie, Elizabeth Shaw, and in particular Ross Woodrow, the latter of whom acted as my primary supervisor for the majority of my candidature and was a significant support. His interest and resourcefulness made a great contribution to many undertakings that were a part of the overall candidature. Profound thanks to Evie Franzidis for editing the final draft of my exegesis and advice during its drafting. Thanks to Sam Canning for his contribution to the Warriorism spearheads in reworking my detailed hand-drawn designs into three-dimension digitised format. I’d like to also thank Robert Andrew for his tireless work in contributing to my Lesser Gods installation and for his other assistance in offshoot experimental works. I thank Dale Harding for his time and patience as a sounding board and also for his much appreciated contributions to the Lesser Gods work. Thank you to Louise Harvey for her voluntary work on the Lesser Gods animation. Much thanks to David Jones for all his time and effort in assisting with proofing/editioning my print work over the years. Very grateful also thanks go to Carl Warner, who has been almost the sole documenter of my work. His skills, time, and ideas were essential to this project; most of the finished works in this exegesis were documented by him. Special thanks also to my sister Renée for her time and words of support. Last but not least, special thanks to my mother, Ingrid, who raised my sister and I as a single parent, worked hard to get us out of the public housing system in Alice Springs, moved us to Brisbane, and worked full-time shift work while completing university and raising us. I dedicate this to you for all the sacrifices you have made over the years and for showing me a better life and greater potentials.

Table of Contents 4

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Abstract 3 List of Figures 6 Introduction 8 Chapter 1. Debt: God’s Time and Money 11 1.1 Making Progress 11 1.2 Christ as the Redeemer 17 1.3 In This Conquer! 19 1.4 Blessed Is the Warrior 22 1.5 Will Ye Contend For God? 23 1.6 Blessed Is the Banker 25 1.7 The Spearhead of Christendom 27 1.8 Killer Trade 28 Chapter 2. Credit: God’s Thirst for War 33 2.1 Converts and Civilisers 33 2.2 Responsibilities of Warrior Saints 39 Chapter 3. Lesser Gods and Beyond 45 3.1 Personal History and Works Preceding Doctoral Study 45 3.2 Warriorism 50 The Work of Lesser Gods 3.3 Lesser Gods 52 3.3.1 Beginnings of the Lesser Gods Artwork 52 3.3.2 Creation of the Lesser Gods Artwork: Influence of the Icon 56 3.4 After Lesser Gods 77 3.4.1 Bedburner 77 3.4.2 dominium 83 3.4.3 1675kmph towards the ends of the earth (Might or right, Heavy or light) 86 3.4.4 Warheads 93 3.4.5 Crown Land (to the ends of the earth) 95 3.4.6 Themesong 99 3.5 Allied Contemporary Practitioners 101 Conclusion 107 Reference List 110 Bibliography 119 Appendix – Install of Themesong Exhibition 129

List of Figures:

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Fig. 1 Ryan Presley Blood Money – 20 Dollar Note – Woloa Commemorative 13 2010, watercolour on Arches paper, 90 x 45 cm Fig. 2 Ryan Presley Warheads 2015, 100 x 50cm, linocut (single skull detail) 15 Fig. 3 Unknown artist St George and the Dragon, Novgorod School, natural 21 pigment and gold leaf on pine Fig. 4 My grandfather (centre) with my uncles, aunties, and my father (left, sitting 45 in the ute tray), ca.1960. Fig. 5 Our Lady of the Sacred Heart Catholic Church, Alice Springs, view from 46 Anzac Hill. Fig. 6 Ryan Presley Blood Money – 20 Dollar Note – Jandamarra 47 Commemorative 2011, watercolour on Arches paper, 90 x 45cm Fig. 7 Ryan Presley Chain Reaction: C Patrol 2010, linocut on Magnani paper, 48 30 x 30cm Fig. 8 Ryan Presley Chain Reaction: C Maneater 2012, linocut on Magnani 48 paper, 30 x 30cm Fig. 9 Ryan Presley Possession 2012, oil on linen, 100 x 72cm 49 Fig. 10a Ryan Presley Warriorism 2013, 3D printed stainless steel, oak, synthetic 50 polymer paint, 300 x 250 x 270cm Fig. 10b Detail of 3D printed stainless steel spearhead 51

Fig. 10c Example of one carved section of the oak spear shaft 51 Fig. 11a Ryan Presley The Good Shepherd 2014, woodcut on Magnani paper 52 Fig. 11b Ryan Presley The Golden Calf 2014, gilded woodcut block 54 Fig. 12a Ryan Presley Lesser Gods (install shot) 2014, mixed media, No Vacancy 55 Gallery, Federation Square, Melbourne Fig. 12b Ryan Presley Lesser Gods (partial install shot) 2014, mixed media 55 Fig. 12c Ryan Presley Lesser Gods (partial install shot – dance floor) 2014, mixed 56 media Fig. 12d Ryan Presley Lesser Gods (partial install shot – dance floor operation) 56 2014, mixed media Fig. 13a Unknown artist Old Testament Trinity 17th century 58

Fig. 13b Ryan Presley Consultation 2014, watercolour, gouache, and gold leaf, 40 x 58 30cm Fig. 14a Cretan School Transfiguration 16th century 59 Fig. 14b Ryan Presley Transfiguration, 2014, watercolour, gouache, and gold leaf, 59 40 x 30cm Fig. 15 Ryan Presley dishonourable-discharge-fever 2014, watercolour, gouache 61 on Arches paper Fig. 16 Ryan Presley Lesser Gods (partial install shot) 2014, No Vacancy Gallery, 62 Federation Square, Melbourne Fig. 17a Unknown artist, St George and the Dragon, 16th century 63 Fig. 17b Ryan Presley Payback 2014, watercolour, gouache, and gold leaf, 40 x 63 30cm Fig. 18 Audience member activating Lesser Gods dance floor tile 2014 67 Fig. 19 Photo documentation of Cymatic experimentation 2014 68 Fig. 20 Ryan Presley Heretic Cymatic series (select images) 2014, watercolour, 69 gouache and synthetic polymer paint, 40 x 30cm each Fig. 21 Photo documentation of Heretic Cymatic sequencing production 2014 70

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Fig. 22 Example documentation of Heretic Cymatic sequencing – initial brief 2014 71 Fig. 23 Example documentation of Heretic Cymatic sequencing – final brief 2014 72 Fig. 24 Example of beating heart motif with change in Cymatic background. (image 73 on the far right is the resulting digital still) 2014 Fig. 25 A variety of changes were able to be made and inserted to develop the 73 scene (image on the far right is the resulting digital still) 2014 Fig. 26 The figures that were designed to be spliced into the wave animation 74 (image on the far right is the resulting digital still) 2014 Fig. 27 Leviathan scales emerging from Out to Sea section 2014 75 Fig. 28a Hell-mouth, preliminary sketched design 2014 76 Fig. 28b Hell-mouth, digitised design – exploded view 2014 76 Fig. 28c Hell-mouth, install shot, Metro Arts Brisbane 2014 76 Fig. 29 Ryan Presley Bedburner I 2014, watercolour, gouache and gold leaf 78 Fig. 30 Ryan Presley Bedburner 2014, drafting wave transition 80 Fig. 31 Ryan Presley Bedburner 2014, digital repeat of the image showing the 81 transition of one section to the other Fig. 32 Ryan Presley Bedburner 2014, digital print textile, final install at Cairns 82 Regional Gallery Fig. 33 Ryan Presley dominium 2015, multi-plate etching with watercolour, 70 x 84 50cm Fig. 34 Imperial inscriptions on ascent of Mt. Tai or Taishan 87 Fig. 35 Ryan Presley 1675kmph towards the ends of the earth (Might or right, 89 heavy or light) 2015, woodcut, 120 x 70cm Fig. 36 “Cultural Transmission”, from Eric Berne, What Do You Say After You Say 90 Hello? The Psychology of Human Destiny (1972) Fig. 37 Ryan Presley Warheads 2015, linocut, 250 x 100cm 92 Fig. 38 Steven Karpman’s Drama Triangle, from Fairy tales and script drama 94 analysis (1968) Fig. 39 Ryan Presley Crown Land (to the ends of the earth) 2016, synthetic 95 polymer paint and gold leaf on Hoop pine panel (work in progress) Fig. 40 The Fiery Ascent of Elijah, Novgorod School 97 Fig. 41 Ryan Presley Themesong 2016, synthetic polymer paint and gold leaf on 99 Hoop pine panel (select images) Fig. 42 Archie Moore Sacred Sites (the first intervention) 2008, sculpted book 102 Fig. 43 Renee Cox Yo Mama’s Last Supper Series 1996, photographic print 102 Fig. 44 Yinka Shonibare, Last Supper (after Leonardo) 2013 103 Fig. 45 Paul Pfeiffer The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (6) 2001, digital 104 duraflex print Fig. 46 Paul Pfeiffer The Four Horseman of the Apocalypse (8) 2001, digital 104 duraflex print Fig. 47 Richard Hamilton the citizen 1983, oil on canvas 104 Fig. 48 Leonard Brown The three holy hierarchs 2008, egg tempera, 24 kt. gold 105 leaf and gesso on beech wood panel Fig. 49 Justin O’Brien The Miraculous Draught of Fishes no. 2 c1978, oil, gold leaf 106 on paper laid on hardboard

Introduction: 7

Ryan Presley – The Legacy of Lesser Gods

Customs and edifices associated with religion, economics, and conquest are evident in many facets of our everyday lives. My doctoral research project has sought to highlight the deeply embedded links between religion, economics, and power that have existed for centuries in colonial, and later postcolonial, societies of the ‘West’. Therefore, a substantial aspect of the archival and written research in the investigation is dedicated to interrogating how religion and economic control have served colonialism and empire building over time. I then focus on how these connections have manifested in Australian society, highlighting how they have negatively affected the lives of Aboriginal Australians.

In this exegesis, I will explore pivotal examples of power and dominion that show how these two forces are inherently interlinked. Various situations are interpreted to demonstrate the interplay between physical, cultural, and spiritual violence, and they form the theoretical foundation for the resulting studio work. Throughout this text, the term ‘spiritual’ relates to sacred items, sacred matters, and devotional practices. My analysis uses a key installation venture from 2014 as an operational cornerstone of the studio-led research. This mixed media project, titled Lesser Gods, also formed the basis of the stylistic approaches and later elaborations in successive studio production.

The phrase ‘Lesser Gods’ is a play on the particular monotheistic ideas of supremacy available within Christianity. Within the research, I discuss historical instances that were driven by a conversion mentality; one that aimed to overpower any alternative practices of divine worship and associated cultures. Along with the colonial practice of cultural destruction, the phrasing of the title captures the ongoing social incompetence reflected in the narratives of Australian history. The work explores the imposition of incompatible political value systems of colonial enterprise on indigenous cultures and theorises around important allegories that serve its purpose. Of significant interest to this research is the existence of popular ‘warrior saint’ myths within Christian traditions, and how these have fed into ‘interventionist’ policies in contemporary times. I also pay special attention to the tradition of icon painting, which has been an aesthetic source of inspiration in my studio work.

Important subjects that I discuss shed light on religious, financial, and cultural connections, including the shaping of power and financial domination, debt and its dependence on authority and divine ritual, as well as generational transference of ideals and practice. The themes and narratives that exist within these profusely reproduced images and stories are able to be ingested within a willing society at a macroscopic level.

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Most of the data collected and examined are historical, from the Medieval Crusades to colonial trade practices of the Industrial Revolution. I have selected these cases since they continue to inform our perception of economics, debt, and Christian ethics. As I will show, these events primed behaviour that became prevalent throughout Western Europe (including Britain) and in turn have manifested in recent history. Importantly, all of these examples are given contemporary relevance by my incorporation of them into the works of art that make up the core outcome of this doctoral research. Through interpreting these widespread and at times disparate events, my research style has developed into a meta-analysis.

I devote considerable space in this exegesis to providing a broad historical overview and to detailing relevant contemporary events in order to frame the studio research. Therefore, various writings and visual sources are included at relevant points throughout rather than being dealt with in the traditional form of a literature review chapter. However, several texts have proved to be key sources, among them John Stuart’s Ikons (1975), David Graeber’s Debt: The First 500 Years (2011), and Karen Armstrong’s Fields of Blood (2014). Having sketched out the interests of this research, I will now provide a brief overview of the structure of the thesis.

In Chapter 1, I investigate elements of Western society in terms of stratification and dominance. I examine how credit and debt allowed for a fortified differentiation between ‘class’ groups. I also consider how themes of debt and redemption are personified in the story of Jesus Christ and later play out in state-enforced religion. I pay special attention to the idea of the warrior saint that emerged in the early Christian church, giving the examples of St George, St Demetrius, and St Theodore, as this is a key theme that I identify within contemporary scenarios and make manifest in my visual work. This chapter concludes with several examples of links between coinage, religious control, and warfare.

I begin Chapter 2 by discussing the inherent link between religious conversion and land repossession, and the accompanying ‘civilising’ narrative that has been utilised to justify these actions. After considering some historical examples, I turn to the events that happened on 11 September 2001 and the subsequent rhetoric around the American invasion of Iraq, drawing parallels to the warrior saint myth. I then look at the legacy of Western traditions in postcolonial Australia. The Northern Territory Emergency Response (colloquially known as ‘the Intervention) serves as an important scenario to demonstrate the contemporary presence of this colonial inheritance. In particular, it shows the continuing impact of the fiction of the warrior saint. This chapter outlines some of the pre-existing conditions that led to the Intervention as well as its aftereffects.

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The third and final chapter gives a detailed description and analysis of specific works that were produced as a part of the candidature. In the first section, I give a brief overview of my personal background and some early works to contextualise the Lesser Gods installation. I then extensively detail the experimental nature of Lesser Gods, recounting the varied processes, mediums, and contributions that were necessary for its success. I also discuss the conceptual interests that informed the work, including recent incidents in Australian society that the work grapples with, such as the murders and torture of certain Aboriginal people. I discuss the role of icons and reinterpret a number of classic icons using the strategy of subversion—elevating the Aboriginal figures in the compositions to positions of power.

The subsequent section shows how different threads of the exhibition were expanded upon to make singular works and experiments within the greater body of work that are presented for this degree. Here I outline the contemporary psychological theory that influenced the latter studio production. This theory also ties in with behaviours and myths that are set out in Chapters 1 and 2, clarifying their contemporary relevance. Finally, I provide a very brief description of other artists who have used similar modes or conceptual expression in their work.

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Chapter 1. Debt: God’s Time and Money

1.1 Making Progress Ideas of progress and money underpin much of Westernised culture. This chapter will highlight the close ties that connected religious and financial operations during key points in Western, European, and Levant histories. Fundamental concepts such as credit, debt, and power are lenses through which Western culture view the surrounding world. Of particular interest is minting, the manipulation of financial systems by power structures, and wartime power consolidation. Debt has a striking connection to social relations and state unity and is a linking theme in this chapter.

Keith Moxey has recently published his critique of the traditional interpretation of time, noting that “the logic of chronology is guaranteed by the sense that time has a purpose and a goal” (2013, 2). The Western ideology of social progression linked to linear time—past, present, and future—has its roots and connections with Christian traditions, and is evident in many cultures throughout Europe. Such thinking has fuelled many Western policies and actions (Stark 2006) for it encapsulates the idea that people have advanced from some imagined lowest rung and will continue to do so in a linear fashion, ascending through all aspects of society. As Robert Nisbet puts it, the lowest rung is conceived as starting “from some aboriginal condition of primitiveness, barbarism, or even nullity” (1980, 4). The commonality of the belief in ‘progress’ within a now globalised world—one that has faced pressures of Western homogeny—is palpable.

The state of technology and people’s access to information today are undeniably different from and more sophisticated than that experienced in previous centuries. What is more contentious is the state of current society’s moral development and progress. Despite much evidence to the contrary of moral development, it is still often bundled along with the other areas of Western society that have experienced changes that are described as ‘progression’ (Macklin 1977). This element of progress fits securely within Christian tradition, faith, and myth that sees a starting point in creation and an end point in apocalypse. Human behaviour is often shaped by societal myth or script. It is possible to argue for the existence of a monotheist God and surrounding prophetic events, such as an Armageddon-type, end-of-the-world scenario. However, it is far more likely that belief of, and faith in, these happenings determines individual and collective behaviours and may influence people’s decision making and actions. Such actions can lead to the staging of events that are not dissimilar to the mythic prophetic events

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of people’s beliefs. This may then lead to the false attribution of God’s hand within the structures of people’s reality—the jump from imagination to perceived reality.

Political and economic changes such as those experienced during the French and Industrial Revolutions, respectively, enhanced the notion that Europeans had reached the pinnacle of progress—that they could look back on the history of the world as a prelude to their own supremacy. The epistemological systems of these times created an environment of perceived rigorous objectivity that “guaranteed an insatiable desire to know and thus control the world and everything in it” (Moxey 2013, 15). These views are symptomatic of ideas of modernity, an ideology held by the ‘West’.

Rodney Stark ruminates on the concept of ‘progress’ and attributes it to Christianity’s “unique conviction that progress was the God-given obligation, entailed in the gift of reason” (2006, 48). This reasoning ability fed the logic that God is perfect; thus, to love and honour God meant that it was necessary to study his (naturally perfect) handiwork. In doing so, one might be able to ascertain knowledge and understanding of these immutable principles (Stark 2006; Brooke 1991).

A state-based religion can provide a unifying link between masses of people who may have no other commonality. As John Henrik Clarke identifies,

Religion is the organisation of spirituality that became the hand-maiden of conquerors. Nearly all religions were brought to people and imposed on people by conquerors, and used as the framework to control their minds. My main point here is that if you are a child of God and God is a part of you, then in your imagination God is supposed to look like you. And when you accept a picture of the deity assigned to you by another people, you become the spiritual prisoners of that other people. (Clarke in St. Clair Bourne 1996)

Over the centuries, this strategy of installing a state religion became a familiar power play throughout Europe and Britain, and was apparent in the establishment and expansion of the British Empire. Furthermore, the combination of cash systems and state-enforced, conversion- based religion fertilised this colonial empire’s expansion with fervour and effectiveness.

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Figure 1 Ryan Presley Blood Money – 20 Dollar Note – Woloa Commemorative 2010. Photographer: Carl Warner.

Australia’s Indigenous peoples have long recognised the cultural significance of the Western tradition of calculative commercialisation. In the course of her anthropological fieldwork in Central Australia, Dianne Bell cited a frequently stated sentiment among her respondents: “You accept the White Man’s money and you have to accept their law” (Bell and Ditton 1980, 121). This is a telling example of Aboriginal lucidity and their awareness of the colonial presence in Australia. It also gives further weight to any approach that questions how money operates and asks what its genesis is.

The earliest evidence of currency lies in the ancient Babylonian and Sumerian empires. These civilisations left behind a plethora of accounting slates that kept records of the transaction of credit and debt, along with evidence of the use of virtual currency (Bottéro 1992). A unit of account was agreed on, generally a stock of barley, and was used as the measurement of the debt agreement for the creditor and debtor (Graeber 2011). Importantly, these agreements were often made across class lines; the aristocracy would typically lend to the working-class peasantry. During times of adversity, outstanding debt and the harsh punishments associated would escalate volatile social conditions. Enforced penalties for debt defaults would often lead to rebellious discontent within the lower classes who bore the brunt of the prosecutions. Moses Finley observes this occurrence in the ancient world, stating that all revolutionary movements during this time had a defined purpose: to “cancel the debts and redistribute the land” (1974, 80).

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In times of hardship, peasants would often default and be liable for debt peonage and bondage. Much discontent would arise within the large peasant population and they would frequently flee the city to escape their unpayable debt. Fringe camps would then swell on the borders of the large cities. The populace of these encampments would often return to the city in violent bursts of plunder and looting. Hostilities of this nature flavour Christian biblical stories and are one of the reasons that terms such as ‘redemption’, ‘trespass’, ‘sin’, ‘forgiveness’, and ‘cleaning the slate’ carry so much cultural connotative weight as well as explaining the animosity towards cities such as Babylon. The violent uprisings pressured leaders to literally ‘wipe the slate’ by cancelling the debt records in particular times of hardship, so as to manage the populace of their large city states (Graeber 2011). These same societal pressures also had a great impact on the status of women, giving rise to Western patriarchy as well as the commercialisation of women, predominantly in terms of sexuality (Lerner 1989).

Women would frequently be at the forefront of debt peonage. Over time, their commercialisation and societal coding became more commonly accepted, especially with the consolidation of patriarchy and militarism (even though one would expect that a father whose daughter was the subject of servitude and prostitution because of his losses would be concerned about the rights of women within society). However, the rebellions of indebted peasantry against the commercialisation of people and debt peonage also supported patriarchy and the authority of ‘the father’. The voice of the fugitive peasantry would have a combination of contempt for corrupt urban life, suspicion of mercantilism, and flavours of strong misogyny.

The dominant image of God as ‘father’ is an important foundation to the sexist overtones of the Christian liturgy and theology. Male images are normally used for God. These depictions have clear political connotations and convey messages of rule and domination (Ruether 1993). For example, the images can include similes, such as ‘kings are like gods’; metaphors such as ‘God as judge’; or analogies, such as ‘God relates to the universe as an earthly king relates to his kingdom’ (Nicholls 1989). Interestingly, the etymology of the word for ‘spirit’ in the languages of the Hebrew-, Aramaic-, and Arab-speaking peoples is feminine. Thus, when concepts of the ‘Holy Spirit’ were introduced to these Middle Eastern Christians, the spirit was referred to as ‘she’. However, when the church became a political power, this terminology and imagery became unfashionable and were replaced by images of domination and patriarchy (Nicholls 1989; Brock 2008). It seems that rebellious discontent was more likely to be linked to the pride of the familial father than care for the welfare of his wife or daughter. David Graeber recounts how the world’s holy books, which include the “Old and New Testaments, the Koran and religious literature from the Middle Ages to the present day” (2011, 14

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183), echo this spurned patriarchal position. As a particular example, the Book of Revelations provides vivid images of how Babylon was viewed and thought of by farmers and members of the lower classes (17:4, 17:5). Peter frequently refers to Rome as ‘Babylon’ throughout the Christian New Testament, an allusion that illustrates the perceived commonality between the blights of the empire-based metropolises. They were linked through the subjugation of their lower classes, as well as by conquest and market-driven logic.

Throughout history, the transition of using virtual credit to cash systems has frequently been linked to an occupying force, militarism, and power expansion. Pam Harris (1991) describes how coins were first minted in response to the need for a standard form of currency that was transferrable, durable, transportable, and of an undisputed value. Richard Doty adds to this by describing that governments were first responsible for coinage, “and thus there is a political element in the distribution and use of this kind of money” (Doty 1978, 8). He continues by providing the example of Rome, which introduced their foreign coinage to the British inhabitants under their occupation (Doty 1978). Thus, it is logical to see the propagandist function of physical coinage (including the dissemination of imperial symbols or portraits), but, more importantly, the political system it requires.

Figure 2 Ryan Presley Warheads 2015 (detail). Photographer: Carl Warner. The inherent purpose of this political symbol is to serve the conqueror and/or their consolidation of power. Michael C. Howard highlights that few people are free from “the rule of money” (1986, 151). But what is the rule of money and who is behind its enforcement? The 15

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rule of money seems to be the rule of authority, and this authority is generally of hierarchical tradition and violent composition. This is interesting in terms of debt to society, kings, or gods—debt to those who lay claim to making us what we are. Geoffrey Ingham considers the considerable etymological evidence of the mediation of debt, money, and holy dominions. As he puts it: In all Indo-European languages, words for ‘debt’ are synonymous with those for ‘sin’ or ‘guilt’, illustrating the links between religion, payment and the mediation of the sacred and profane realms by ‘money’. For example, there is a connection between money (German: Geld), indemnity or sacrifice (Old English: Geild), tax (Gothic: Gild) and of course, guilt. (Ingham 2004, 90)

Thus, through the proliferation of cash, a political authority may be able to contain a population and incorporate them into an existing hierarchical system. Such a system may prioritise the usage of an armed force and the need for its provisioning, the continuation of which then supports the authority’s establishment and power. Tyrants and coinage emerged simultaneously in the Greek world. This emergence marked the beginning of monopolised minting and an enduring association between money and state sovereignty (Steil and Hinds 2009).

Lydian tyrants were among the first men in their various cities to become aware of the potential of the new conditions that were created by the introduction of coinage. They owed much of their power to the financial or commercial supremacy they had already established before they acquired absolute political power in their states (Ure 1922; Bordo and White 1991). Attaching a mystique to the overvaluation of these coined objects was also necessary. Their face value significantly exceeds any intrinsic value, so rulers typically co-opted religious symbols into their production.

Throughout history, one can often see a literal connection between money and religion: the less gold, the more God. ‘In God We Trust’ was only added to the American dollar in 1862 after its original gold backing ceased (Steil and Hinds 2009). Conquerors had a habit of issuing prodigious amounts of money and these items often spread and circulated internationally, outside of the authority’s direct domain. Coins would allow people to roam further than before with the confidence that they would have the means to secure food, clothing, and protection. Individuals who knew nothing of each other found an easy mode of interaction, and through this, a larger span of possible networks (Steil and Hinds 2009). Moreover, a fundamental part of the issuing process was how the money was moderated and recalled.

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Tax policies attached to the circulation of this new cash ensured the maintenance of its flow. These policies were designed to create markets that did not previously exist. Graeber reports how this was particularly true in the colonised world. He gives an example of the French occupation of Madagascar by recounting how: one of the first things the French General Gallieni, conqueror of Madagascar, did when the conquest of the island was complete in 1901 was to impose a head tax. Not only was the tax quite high, it was only payable in the newly issued Malagasy francs. In other words, Gallieni did indeed print money and then demand that everyone give it back to him. (2011, 50)

Interestingly, Gallieni described the tax he imposed as a ‘moralising tax’. This and the markets it creates open the oppressed population into conquest power structures and consumer practices (Askegaard and Firat 1997). These sorts of scenarios are common anywhere in the world where there has been a presence of European conquest and arms.

1.2 Christ as the Redeemer

The presence and practice of implementing and promoting taxation has an interesting parallel with the focal story and advent of Christianity. Jesus Christ is very commonly referred to as ‘the redeemer’. The climactic story of his life is that his very death, a sacrificial crucifixion, is the payment that absorbs and cleans away the general population’s sins and immoral acts. He is spoken of literally as a gift from ‘God’ to ‘man’ who is then returned to God in way that, when looked at through the lens of debt politics, has an unnerving similarity to Gallieni’s ‘head tax’. Seen this way, his resurrection can fit easily into the return of financial capital from the power base, to start such a cycle once more.

The cycling of currency is aided by Christian ritual and belief. The homogeneity and heterogeneity of money in its physical form find a parallel in the practice of the Eucharist. They share the same conversion of a material thing into a spiritual being. It has been argued that money is inextricably linked with food-communion rituals such as the Eucharist (Desmonde 1962; Einzig 1949). With its conversion, there is some alliance with the problem of representation versus production, as minted money is not only a commodity but also a symbol (Shell 1982). It has the same air of mystery as the ritual of the symbolic consumption of God’s flesh and blood. Thus, the consumption leads to the knowing and oneness with God the Father and God the Son, but also of indebtedness to them.

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Friedrich Nietzsche describes the seeming incongruity of Christianity’s original sin ‘tax’. He remarks on the: stroke of genius of Christianity: God sacrificing himself for the guilt of human beings, God paying himself back with himself, God as the only one who can redeem man from what for human beings has become impossible to redeem—the creditor sacrificing himself for the debtor. (1887, 21)

This core narrative, which Nietzsche has astutely recognised, has themes that hegemonic systems may find acceptable to be brandished as official religion of the state.

The redemption narrative is of particular significance when looked at through the lens of conquest and its financial history. Emile Durkheim ([1955] 2001) suggests that gods in every religion are always projections of society; he asserts that ‘god’ and ‘society’ are one and the same. A cultural myth is never simply the story of an historical incident; instead, it expresses a timeless truth about a group of people’s daily lives. In doing so, the myth was not always a past fiction, but instead an active part of the perpetual present (Armstrong 2014). Having a central figure in Christianity being a literal debt martyr for humanity’s sins is arguably an effective tool for the state power traditions of the West. Furthermore, the idea of being born with original sin, such as in Catholicism, can be compared to a tradition of primordial debt.

Christ’s crucifixion may be a proxy for this debt, although it is seemingly ineffective since the debt merely changes hands. Ingham writes of the elemental debt as “that owed by the living to the continuity and durability of the society that secures their individual existence” (2004, 90). Further to this, he notes, “the ultimate discharge of this fundamental debt is sacrifice of the living to appease and express gratitude to the ancestors and deities of the cosmos” (Ingham 2004, 90). This archaic and common belief is complementary to the original sin debt of Christianity that has been reinforced by different incarnations and is evident in the colonial societies and nationalism that accompanies them.

The founding of a society in a new territory is culturally akin to founding a new world (Eliade 1968). When traditions and ways of thinking are transported to, and imposed upon, different local and different cultural practices, they influence behaviours and determine actions. Logically, such a spread of ideas and beliefs onto different scenarios and circumstances may create various problems when outdated and unsuitable for new environments and challenges. For the colonial British Empire and its utilisation of Christian dogma, primordial debt politics and warrior saint allegories appeared to be suitable traditions for population control and border expansion. These traditions could then be passed down through familial lines and thus slowly infiltrate the very fabric of societal practices. It could then influence institutional exercises,

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particularly in the justice systems, governmental policies, and expressions of modern nationalism. Secular society, therefore, is patently not immune to this legacy.

1.3 In This Conquer!

With the development of secular governance, the tradition of debt has been transferred from kings, select mediators, and gods to the state. Graeber posits that now we owe the most fundamental debts to “the Nation that formed us, pay interest in the form of taxes, and when it comes to defend the nation against our enemies, to offer to pay it with our lives” (2011, 71). All political communities develop their ideologies to ground their institutions and activities in the natural order that they perceive them to be. These are then transferred through familiar ties and reproduction and are the key implement to cultural transference (Armstrong 2014; Berne 1970). This is an important point to note in the (West’s) traditional reverence of the ‘conqueror’ and proclivity for empire.

With the conversion of Emperor Constantine (272–337), the Byzantium Empire was soon connected to the Old Testament in profound ways. Constantinople became the new Zion; the Byzantine emperor became the new David; and Byzantium’s enemies were then viewed as present-day Canaanites and Philistines. The Byzantines were now God’s ‘chosen people’ and as such they adopted and developed Israelite ways of linking the divine and human worlds, which was expressed through the different strata of the social hierarchy, particularly their imperial ideology. The two populations shared bellicose tendencies and were not known for giving amnesty (Dagron 2003; Walter 2003).

Aggression goes hand in hand with almost any political power, and the Roman Empire was no exception. As an empire, its goals were to frequently extend the boundaries of its outer territories (more often than not through violence); to increase the power of the state; and to improve state revenue. On the eve of the end of his campaign for sole supremacy, Constantine had a vision of a flaming cross blazing in the sky, with a clear motto on it reading, ‘In this conquer!’ After Constantine’s victory, Christianity became a chartered religion within the Roman Empire (Armstrong 2014).

Constantine soon moved the capital of the Empire from Rome to Byzantium, a principal and strategic juncture between Europe and Asia, and renamed it Constantinople (today’s Istanbul). This was a critical point in the use of Christianity for a state purpose. Jesus had preached in reaction against occupation and but now this intention had been subverted and an imperial

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Christianity soon arose. This religion proposed one God, one Empire, and one Emperor (Al- Azmeh 1997; Gaddis 2005). As the doctrines of Jesus became divorced from his social reality, they lost much of their practical efficacy. Constantine was able to place Jesus as the celestial figurehead and guardian of the imperial Roman state without any true obligation or commitment to adopt his philosophy as a guide to policy (Parkes 1959). The rhetoric of worldly authority instead resembled the interchangeable language of divinity and kingship that had been on offer since the earliest of agrarian civilisation (Belting 1994). Importantly, through religious ties, a foreign sovereign could claim power more easily over any subjects that shared their religion.

An enterprising leader of the Russian people, Vladimir of Kiev (958–1015) was another important example of political conversion. Vladimir gained a reputation in his early years as a military leader who led many soldiers into battle in multiple wars, and successfully extended the territory of his realm (Shubin 2004). During his reign, he actively searched for a state religion. Finding little liking for Judaism or Islam, he saw potential in varieties of state-enforced Christianity because of the way it was able to unify people with no prior relationship. The Orthodox Church sent forward a monk philosopher to woo Vladimir to the side of Orthodoxy. He bore an icon-style linen that depicted a judgement day apocalypse; the persecution of the wicked and the salvation of the good. The variation of Orthodoxy as opposed to Roman Catholicism was of particular merit because Orthodoxy embraced state control whereas Catholicism was more subject to papal interference (Shubin 2004). Vladimir’s decision was sealed when the neighbouring emperor of Byzantium, Basil II, turned to the Kievan Rus (now known as Russia) for military assistance, despite being rivals at that time. Vladimir agreed in exchange for a politically motivated marital tie; he also agreed to accept Byzantium Christianity as his religion and to eventually Christianise his people. When the wedding arrangements were settled, Vladimir dispatched 6,000 elite troops to the Byzantine Empire, and the revolt was quashed (Raffensperger 2012).

Neither Vladimir nor Constantine acted in a particularly Christian manner during their reigns; both were military commanders who required a utilitarian religion with a superficial appeal to the senses in order to consolidate the loyalties of their subjects. Both used the Christian religion of their day to serve their needs and modified it as necessary to adapt to their style of rule (Shubin 2004). This was pragmatic diplomacy on Vladimir’s part: not only did the Rus share a border with the Byzantium Empire but the country also enjoyed trade with both Eastern and Western Europe. Sharing a common religion would help secure these ties.

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For the duration of Vladimir’s reign, the Russians maintained trade relations with both Western Europe led by Rome, of which Kievan Rus was the eastern wing, and with Constantinople. Kiev was also a centre for the slave trade, in which Vladimir was heavily involved (Obolensky 1993; Shubin 2004). His conversion was additionally regarded as a triumph for Christian expansion, and the overland trade route from the Baltic to the Black Sea was further opened up to missionary work. Vladimir was keenly adept at using both war and religion to increase his territory, consolidating it as a single, solid state for the twenty-five years after his baptism. Orthodoxy was effective at expansion through conversion. Enterprising missionaries, with the aid of icon imagery, took to establishing churches and teaching converts from Eastern Europe well towards Siberia (Blainey 2011).

Figure 3 Unknown artist St George and the Dragon 15th century, Novgorod School

Mircea Eliade states that “one becomes truly a man only by conforming to the teaching of the myths, that is, by imitating the gods” (1963, 100). Therefore, for a population with the myth of the liberator, the act of conquest is granted a special and possibly guised importance. Within the Christian tradition, warrior saints such as St George, St Demetrius, and St Theodore and appear to fit this narrative of sanctioned, violent liberator.

1.4 Blessed Is the Warrior

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St George of Cappadocia (280–303) was originally a soldier of the Roman army in Asia Minor. Cult worship of him became popular in the West especially during and after the Crusades (Sill 1975). The myth of him slaying a troublesome dragon centres on the Libyan town of Silene. The dragon’s breath was said to be toxic and poisoned the air. Citizens of the town fed the dragon their tender young sons and daughters in order to satisfy it. However, when it began demanding the king’s own daughter, this appeared to be a step too far. St George, referred to as young, handsome, and armed, slew the dragon. There are other versions where he held the injured dragon as a living ransom, threatening not to actually slay it until all the town’s citizens converted to Christianity (Sill 1975; Temple 2004; Loverance 2007). His acts have a notable psychological appeal in the Crusading period, and he has remained popular in Western and Eastern traditions, with his representations even spreading to Islam (Walter 2003).

St Demetrius of Thessaloniki (270–306) was also a warrior patron saint of the Crusades. He is typically portrayed as an infantry soldier for the Roman army. In icons, he is commonly depicted along with St George, both of them on horseback. When paired together, Demetrius is usually painted as being old and riding a darker steed, while George is portrayed as young and riding a white horse. However, instead of killing a dragon, St Demetrius is portrayed spearing a hunched-over gladiator who, according to varying accounts, was responsible for killing many Christians. The gladiator is commonly depicted below Demetrius and lying prostrate, having already been defeated. The figure is traditionally drawn much smaller than Demetrius. In some accounts, Demetrius does not directly kill the gladiator, but rather defeats the gladiator through his prayers.

St Theodore of Heraclea (birth date unknown–319) bears a mythical narrative very similar to St George. He is said to have come from the city of Euchaita in Asia Minor. He reportedly killed a giant serpent living on a cliff along the outskirts of the city. The serpent had terrorised the countryside and its townspeople. Theodore decided to take up arms, and he vanquished it with a sword. In some of the myth’s variations, Theodore was appointed military-commander of the city of Heraclea Pontica during the time that the Roman Emperor Licinius began a fierce persecution of Christians. Theodore himself invited Licinius to Heraclea, having promised to offer a sacrifice to the pagan gods. Before Licinius’s arrival, Theodore requested that all the gold and silver statues of the gods held in Heraclea be gathered up at his house. Theodore then smashed the idols, divided them up into pieces, and distributed them to the poor. For this act, he was later arrested, tortured, and crucified. Fatefully, he became a favourite saint of worship for Crusaders and he was said to have the power to intervene in battle and to be apotropaic (Walter 2003). 22

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Through venerating these saints, a population may spiritualise the enemy by theorising that material evil is a reflection of spiritual disorder. In iconography, the difference between physical and spiritual martial conflict can be blurred; they can become a mirror image. The act of killing is transposed onto a symbolic level. Even today, if a lay viewer is shown an icon of St Demetrius, they can quite easily understand the underlying image’s message. Such an icon depicts the immediately recognisable struggle between good and evil. The warrior saint’s role as a representative of an outside force that has rights over foreign territory sits well for a vested interest that has possible gains to reap from expansion. Someone who enacts this mimicry may not only quote their valued qualities but also find themselves elevated into some esteemed echelon within their own society.

This warrior saint impersonation undoubtedly serves to fuel the imperial and colonial process of expansion, and the parallel in terms of economics could be recognised as ‘growth’. In having a violent societal archetype, expansion and conquest are more easily psychologically accomplished. In this view, violence is acceptable and may lay the foundation for the commercial consumerism that underlies this ‘growth’, which in turn, is supported by the extension of credit: the ability to consume now and settle debt later. Part of the belief that is held by both creditor and debtor is that there will be a surplus in future, one that not only fulfils the current debt, but also any interest or profit that may be worthwhile (Heinberg 2012). Understanding this allows an insight into Australia’s colonial processes, which have components of risk, violence, and venture, as I will discuss in the next chapter.

1.5 Will Ye Contend for God?

The roots of modern colonialism do not lie in the Atlantic or ‘new world’, but in the Middle East (or what has been historically known as the Levant) with the Crusades (Verlinden 1970; Armstrong 2014). The Crusaders and their systems of hierarchy, namely the Knights Templar and Knights Hospitallers, were crude forms of European models of colonialism and trade banking that were honed shortly thereafter. Charles Verlinden states that “colonisation began immediately in the Holy Land with the Crusade principalities” (1970, 5). The word ‘Crusade’ literally means “way of the cross” (Frankopan 2012). It was with the Crusades that commercialism, profit, and colonial expansion first became Western European traditions.

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James Muldoon (1977) acknowledges that even during the medieval era, religious motivation was never the sole purpose for expansion. From the very first Crusade, economic and social motives were inextricably associated with religious culture. Pope Urban II was only too aware of the profits to be made in winning territory and fortune from the ‘infidel’. His papacy lasted from 1088 to 1099, during which he proclaimed the First Crusade in 1095. It was composed of a miscellaneous combination of pious volunteers, pilgrims, both forced and free, and knights; all were predominantly in their youth. They were outnumbered, poorly provisioned, and barely disciplined. The combination of malnutrition and prolonged fear made them especially susceptible to abnormal and fanciful states of mind. They saw their mission not as conquest but as liberation (Armstrong 2014; Frankopan 2012). The different cultures and ethnicities of their proclaimed enemies undoubtedly boosted their sense of righteousness and lowered inhibitions in the actions that followed—the creation of an us-versus-them dichotomy so common in warfare.

The First Crusaders killed over 30,000 men and women in Jerusalem in less than three days. Karen Armstrong states that “there were so many dead that the crusaders were unable to dispose of the bodies” (2014, 193). Some Crusaders resorted to eating the dead flesh of their enemies as part of the clean-up effort and reported that if properly cooked and with some salt, it tasted rather like bacon (Howarth 1982). As the invasion’s success was sealed, so too were the distinctions and institutions of the Knights Hospitaller of St John and the Knights Templar, the latter becoming one of the first professional, disciplined fighting forces of Western Europe since the Roman legions (Keegan 1993).

When the amount of potential victims wore thin, the Crusaders forwarded in what must have been a surreal procession to the ‘Church of Resurrection’. They sang hymns and many wept tears of joy (Howarth 1982; Armstrong 2014; Krey 1921). The irony of the Crusaders assembled beside the tomb of a man who famously died from an act of tremendous human cruelty singing praises to him after their own long binge of violence and cruelty was seemingly lost upon them. This illusion of ordained righteousness and liberation to sanction such potent acts of violence is still observable in Western cultural practices. As these colonies became further established and secondary waves of ‘liberation’ eventuated, this seemingly religious ideology pervaded deeply into Western society. Armstrong reiterates that Western imperialism “would often share the ruthlessness and aggressive righteousness of crusading” (2014, 194).

1.6 Blessed Is the Banker

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The Knights Templars were instrumental in the construction of modern western banking. They played a key role in the sustained financing of the Crusades (Howarth 1982; Graeber 2011). The Templars adopted a key financial technique of their Islamic enemies, a ‘draft’ bill of exchange offering mortgages to be taken out in various locations throughout Europe and redeemed in cash from the Temple located in Jerusalem (Chaudhry 2005; Graeber 2011). This appropriation proved a boon to the organisation, and their banking resources grew to be vast, with a clientele of aristocracy and kings.

The Templars were active from 1118 to 1308. Their sudden decline came with King Phillip IV, who, not surprisingly, was deeply in debt to the Knights Templar (Howarth 1982). He oversaw the accusation of the Order for sodomy, heresy, and occult practices. Their leaders were mercilessly imprisoned, tortured, and killed, many burnt at the stake. All this proceeded without any substantiated concrete evidence, and their accumulated wealth was expropriated shortly thereafter (Howard 1982; Barber 1978; Graeber 2011). This proved to be an important lesson for relatively minor trading interests: the threat of outgrowing established hierarchies may have perilous results. More successful commercial interests invest greater care in the politic of the crown and so-called national interests, and the debt arising from them.

In medieval Genoa, close ties existed between the colonial companies and the national debt; regarded from this perspective, the famous Mississippi and South Sea companies are only a link in a long tradition (Verlinden 1970, 7). Colonial enterprises therefore have had a long convention of extraction practices that benefit the willing opportunists of the frontline but also the national interests that they serve. Over time, these practices that were laid out in the crusader colonies were sharpened to more clearly resemble the colonial capitalism of our present.

Verlinden recounts in detail how, “during the centuries following the Crusades, the attractiveness of overseas expansion and the profits to be made from overseas colonies contributed greatly to the development of European commercial methods” (1970, 70). The aptly named Bank of St George (founded in Genoa in 1407) is noted to have played a role of prime importance in the models of infrastructure that followed to support this crafted colonial practice. The bank was the oldest chartered bank in the world. Founded by an alliance of all the creditors in the Republic of Genoa, it soon became the most powerful financial operation of the time, loaning to the Commonwealth all the moneys required to carry out government in times of peace and war (Harrisse 1888).

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In exchange for their lending, the Bank received state taxes and duties, with the power to collect directly and to have immunity from interference or control of judicial authorities. It added commerce to finance in forms that were later imitated by the French, English, and Dutch West and East India Companies. It was also responsible for funding the colonial exploration of Christopher Columbus (Harrisse 1888). Today’s modern joint-stock companies, whether practicing banking or trade, were all derived from imitating the practices and inventions of this powerful bank.

It was also a model of administration for the colonies in Crimea and Levant (Verlinden 1970). Companies that followed this model in England and the Netherlands were created as proxies for an established feudal hierarchy. These companies were critical in establishing the control of commerce and colonial settlement, as well as municipal administration (Verlinden 1970). They were key enterprises in directing the expansion of their national interests.

By the early seventeenth century, the Dutch had contributed a fundamental building block to Western capitalism. They pioneered a successful joint-stock company practice, where members combined capital assets. The assets were pooled as a permanent basis and then controlled by a common management. This gave the trading venture, which was typically dealing colonial resources, outreach and security far greater than a sole patron’s resource (Armstrong 2014, 218). Tellingly, the structure of the corporation is designed to eliminate moral imperatives while focusing on profit (Graeber 2011, 320). It is no coincidence that the first major joint-stock corporations in the world were the Dutch and British East India companies, which pursued a very potent combination of exploration, conquest, and extraction. The establishment of the corporation as a legal entity was composed within the height of Crusade religious fervour.

Pope Innocent IV had forged the ideal of the corporation into canon law in 1250. Fredrick Maitland states that “the corporation is immortal, who sues and is sued, who holds land, has a seal of his own, who makes regulations for those natural persons he is composed” (1908, 54). This reflects the myth making of the time, as dominated by fevered Christianity, one that was imaging angelic beings and spiritual bodies of celestial origins with intellectual presence (Kantorowicz 1957). People were so taken with these fantasies at this time that they fashioned them into reality through the sequence of belief, behaviour, and action.

This creation of a nominal ‘person’ in the realm of economic corporate culture is perhaps not that unusual. Imagined practices of ‘God’ and ‘finance’ have often found an expression and dependent relationship in the other. It is plausible to suggest that perhaps God did not sculpt 26

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‘man’ in his image, but instead that people, more often men, have sculpted God in their desired image. In turn, this God condones their aspirations and deeds. God has often been constructed as a being with a comforting presence whose behaviour seems reminiscent of an imaginary parental figure (or figures). Similar to a parent looking down upon a cradle, God is above (occupying the sky), often or always supervising us, sometimes imitating us, and regularly concerned with humanity’s behaviour. This legacy of the formidable corporate entity, with its supernatural privilege, continues to have a hold in present times.

1.7 The Spearhead of Christendom

Richard Dawkins outlines his view that “Christianity was spread by the sword, first by the Romans after Constantine raised it from eccentric cult to official religion, then by Crusaders, and later by conquistadores and other European invaders and colonists, with missionary accompaniment” (2006, 59). Passages of the Christian biblical text can be interpreted and arranged to easily fit conflicting views and processes, one for piety towards the weak and sick, and others for the brutal seizure of territories. An excellent example of Dawkins claim example that of Hernán Cortés’s (1485–1547) conquest of Tenochtitlan.

When Cortés landed in what is now Mexico in 1519, he discovered many things equivalent to European tradition—including roads, canals, cities, irrigation works, theatre, art, music, schools, law courts, palaces, aristocracy, astronomers, markets, merchants, peasantry, priests, temples, kings and armies—that were all developed independently of European influence (Bryson 2010). What ensued was the violence typical of colonial conquest. The fact that such systems were present and recognisable to European eyes draws further proof to the fallacy that the colonial enterprise was selective in what it sought to subordinate via some sort of scale of sophistication: an imaginary scale that placed ‘othered’ societies in a laddered position of civilisation, with Europeans at the top. The example of Cortés demonstrates that those pretexts are just that—moot points to excuse the greater issue, which is that the ‘other’ possesses what the imperial power desires.

Cortés was reportedly a gambler. Before setting out for Mexico, he had lived a lavish and reckless lifestyle. From these habits, he had become deeply in debt. His sacking and plunder of Tenochtitlan was in large part motivated to procure capital to repay this debt. So severe was his debt and recklessness that even after his successful conquest, neither he nor many of his men actually profited from the endeavour (Graeber 2011). These practices of growth, progress, commercial calculation, consumption, and expansion are fundamentals of past and present colonialism. The glorification of these exploits is evident in current accounts and 27

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narratives of these events. Cortés is more commonly remembered as a pioneer and a figure who more closely resembles Eliade’s definition of cultural conformity. His violent lead also spearheaded the entry of Christendom into what is now Central America.

This spread of financial and religious attitudes no doubt supported colonial accounts. Today, as Yash Tandon says, “colonial narratives persist. The inequities of the global trading system are glossed over in an ideological camouflage” (2015, 2). He reasons that, “if you do not write your own story, you have no right to independence. If you do not write your own story others will write it for you” (2015, 87). Thus, power-based financial pressure has continued since the class friction of ancient Mesopotamia through to the colonisation of Mexico and extends into the current day with our modern nation states.

Cultural perceptions of ownership have also revealed themselves to be essential to Anglo- Western thought and prime drivers in the colonial epoch. Howard defines ownership as “acknowledged supremacy, authority, or power over a physical object or process” (1986, 143). This tradition of ownership became more rigid within Europe over the past millennia with the traditions of oligarchies, aristocracies, and feudalism. Empire-building traditions within Europe and the Middle East help to congeal this rigidity. With the advent of state-endorsed Christianity, this evolution manifested more clearly with the blend of spiritual practice and power consolidation.

Trade has now become a strong euphemism for what often is little more than an extended action of debt peonage. Trade may be implemented to kill people. Although somewhat less aggressive in appearance than bombs or bullets, it can drive people to poverty on one end and balloon wealth on the other. It may enrich powerful corporations and make working peasantry further destitute and politically marginalised, often causing them to become refugees within their own countries (Tandon 2015; Graeber 2011).

1.8 Killer Trade

To this day, the corporation can be viewed as technically immortal (Robins 2006). The trade model that began to develop in the times of the Crusades and Middle Ages has been part of a wider effort of war that has spanned from the historic slave trade to the current commodities trade (Tandon 2015). Key events and companies in this process involve Verenigde Oostindische Compagnie (VOC) [Dutch East India Company] and the English East India Company (EIC).

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The VOC (1602–1799) was formed by a variety of different companies of Dutch origin that were profiteering from the spice trade. Due to competition, the prices were low for the consumer, which meant that the profits for the investors were disastrously low. This led the competing companies to amalgamate into one body, a unification that led to a monopoly of trade with Asia; and the company worked diligently to channel trade for its own benefit (Robins 2006). The Dutch had pioneered the public debt stock exchange that made the modern corporate model possible. This development had also given them a critical edge over other European nations’ trade companies.

In 1688, a powerful alliance of English aristocrats, who were supported by the merchants of London, invited the Dutch prince William of Orange to invade England. This invitation was accepted and a powerful Dutch fleet sailed for England and successfully ousted the monarch James II. This unusual political coup can also be interpreted as an enterprising business merger and the new monarch became William III of England. His instalment directly affected the prosperity of the EIC (Ferguson 2002). His position also marked the change in England of the monarchy from absolute to a limited, constitutional one. The call for Dutch intervention had been motivated by fears of James II’s attitude toward business (Gustafson 2015), particularly since the previous monarch Charles II had defaulted on his debt. It was also indicative of a power struggle within the English hierarchy, which in this case had led to the successful diminishing of the absolute monarch’s reach. However, the struggle between the monarchy, government, aristocracy and an emerging middle class was not yet over (Stern and Wennerlind 2013). This Dutch intervention is an early case of the Western trend for ‘friendly government’ installation. At this point in the British Empire, it was internal. However, over time, the trend of instating amenable governing bodies to external ‘outposts’ that were friendly to the objectives of Western powers would become a routinely practiced occurrence (Bowden 2009)

Due to the success of this takeover, Dutch businessmen became major shareholders in the EIC. The English oligarchy effectively co-opted Dutch financial institutions and techniques. Previously, the English financial system had been on the brink of bankruptcy, and drastic measures such as the 1671 moratorium on government debts were imposed. This had fuelled the aristocratic political discontent that led to the events regarded as the ‘Glorious Revolution’. The Bank of England was founded in 1694, and, like the Dutch version, it managed the government’s borrowings and controlled the national currency. It also operated by using the Dutch system of national public debt, which was funded through a Stock Exchange. This institutional imitation allowed for long-term bonds to be easily bought and sold. Importantly, it 29

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allowed the government to borrow from the bank at significantly reduced interest rates. These innovations made costly projects such as warfare easier to afford (Ferguson 2002).

This proved to be a great boost to the EIC and their operations in the East were far more successful. The EIC (1600–1872) was distinct from the VOC through the way it blended the mediaeval concept of the corporation as an essentially public body with the industrial model of an enterprise; one that acted primarily in the interests of its shareholders. It was essentially a private venture with the backing, at least superficially, of the Crown (Robins 2006).

During the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, English ‘trade’ with India was a segue to England colonising India. The EIC was chartered as a company of merchants of London trading into the East Indies (Tandon 2015). As part of their charter, the company was awarded the monopoly of all trade between England on the lands beyond the Cape of Good Hope (Robins 2006). Initially, they traded in commodities such as cotton, silk, dye, salt, tea, and opium. Over time, by skilfully enlisting colonial techniques of divide and conquer, the company created its own administration and military force to rule over significant portions of India. By 1709, the EIC was one of the key creditors to the British Crown, second only to the Bank of England (Dirks 2006).

The Company appreciated the value of “conducting commerce with sword in your hands”, as articulated by the EIC’s governor of Bombay, Gerard Aungier in 1677 (Robins 2006, 29). From the outset, the EIC made military and political considerations that were critical to its success (Dirks 2006). It seems that the links between successful trade and military force remain as powerful as ever; in Thomas Friedman’s (2000) analysis of globalisation, he demonstrates that the hidden hand of the market will never work without the veiled fist. Like today's multinationals, the EIC often succeeded in winning sizable tax breaks, and enjoyed charters at home and imperial decrees abroad, all of which were a normal part of its wider business of buying and selling.

Although the ideology of the empire espoused the practice of free trade, it made this act impossible for the colonised. Subjugation and limitation were necessary facets of their business from which the coloniser benefited and consolidated (Dirks 2006). In addition to the state backing of its charter were a number of semi-sovereign privileges for the EIC. These included the right to mint coins in its overseas subsidiaries, to exercise justice in its settlements, and, crucially, the right to wage war (Robins 2006). The EIC and its associates were able to achieve their goals precisely because they were able to defend their chartered monopoly: the marketplaces of eastern India. 30

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Long before the formal dates of conquest such as the 1757 recapture of Calcutta or 1764 defeat of the Mughal, Bengal, and Awadh alliance, small exercises and the applications of the law of contract with military support were enacted around factories and other workshops of manufacture. These actions anticipated a fiscal-military state that would guarantee favourable conditions of trade. In turn, the native political control was simultaneously demilitarised and undermined by representatives of the EIC, which in no doubt aided their foreign commercial interest (Sen 1998). These were part of a larger effort of corrupting local decision making and dividing the community. It became a time-tested strategy of the EIC in their trade occupation of India. For over a century, the EIC was the profitable, pounding heart of the British Empire.

During the Sepoy revolts in the late 1857, which the British called rebellion, the colonisers used tactics of severe violence in an effort to crush the uprising. Poetically, the revolts were sparked by the introduction of a new rifle, the cartridges of which were rumoured to have been produced with a lard coating made of pig and cow fat. These cartridges had to be torn open with the operator’s mouth. For the Muslim and Hindu soldiers who were mercenaries serving the English, this was a profound horror. Given the arrival of Christian missionaries at the same time, many Indians were convinced that this was part of a larger British plot to enforce Christian conversion (Bryson 2010).

The Indian soldiers reacted and slaughtered many of the EIC men and their families. British retribution for this was rapid and merciless. Untold numbers of Indian people were indifferently shot and hanged; some were literally fired from canons (Bryson 2010). In 1858 after these revolts and the bloody reprisals, the British Crown assumed direct control of the EIC and absorbed it into its own power base. In doing so, it seized a vast colonial project approximately 13.5 times the size of England (Tandon 2015). There are similarities here with the case of the Knights Templar; a monarchy intervenes on a commercial interest when it is seen as unviable or a threat.

With the advent of a corporate business model, direct responsibility became diluted. There was more possibility for speculative and reckless behaviours in business and trade practices, with fewer people to take direct responsibility for these actions. Amid the push for monopoly control, it became clear that there was an absence of automatic remedy for corporate abuses. Through corporate structures responsibility is often effectively diffused. As these models were influenced by a populace of shareholders, they may operate or have similarities to a property- based democracy. These shareholders not only have a financial stake but also often have some rights to vote in quarterly meetings, which are often determined by a possession of 31

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nominal stock, somewhat like constituents of a parliamentary borough. These shareholders are then often ‘governed’ by an elected board of executives, directors, and a chairman (Robins 2006; Wright 2013).

The interesting parallel is that the hierarchy remains, while the nation (i.e., a physical landmass with territorial borders) is absent. There seems to be a progression here of colonial practice that has virtually stripped away the need for a national or sovereign anchor. There are similarities too to a religion that relies on conversion. There is no central locus for which faith operates and orients itself. Instead, such as in Christianity, God is omnipresent and can be worshipped accordingly. Corporate business organisations can function now too as united drifters, enabled to set down where commerce is good. They are less tied to any one locale or headquarters. Instead, the organisations are now perpetually foreign and legally regarded as immortally so.

This chapter has plotted out some important connections in the honing of expansionist business models. As demonstrated, the interplay of religiously sanctioned and violent organisations were entangled with changes to modern banking. The belief systems and histories connected to this helped to shape our modern day corporate and interventionist Western cultures. In the following chapter, I discuss the role this intervention ideology has played in current Australian society and will give further background on this conversion- civilising activity.

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Chapter 2. Credit: God’s Thirst for War

2.1 Converts and Civilisers

To some degree, all major world religions contemplate the human condition in the language of the marketplace. The reason is that all of them arose amid intense arguments about the role of money and the market in human life; in particular, the role that these institutions should play in the fundamental questions of what humanity owed one another (Gustafson 2015; Graeber 2011). The Bible, written by many hands over hundreds of years, and drawing on oral histories from before the invention of writing, naturally has diverse and even contradictory passages, including on the relationship between religious and financial concepts. There are clear references to the buying back of ancestral land. Hebrew words such as ‘padah’ and ‘goal’ translate distinctly to this concept of redemption, while passages in Leviticus (25:25, 26) refer to land rights recovery. In contrast, a passage in the Book of Numbers refers to God’s permission to dispossess other peoples (33:53).

As will be evidenced in the following section, the Aboriginal battle against land dispossession in Australia continues today. The advantage of the Christian text for the purposes of colonisation was that it could be used for its two-pronged approach—it both approves and disapproves of land dispossession all under the same monotheistic management. Moreover, the conversion-based element of Christian religion has allowed its borders to swell along with the expansion-hungry culture it has served: first of violence and then of cultural assimilation. Once conversion takes place on the conquered, they are offered reassurance in the sympathetic passages of the text.

In areas of Australia where historical colonial engulfment has been relatively less successful, such as parts of the Northern Territory and Western Australia, there has been a higher amount of continuous cultural transference between successive generations of Aboriginal people. This means that in these places, there is a stronger spiritual presence of the original culture and its values as opposed to in coastal areas that were more easily accessed and sought after by colonial Europeans and their militaristic and missionary activities. Due to this position, these groups remain at a point of cultural peril that exists at the ‘frontiers’ of civilisation.

A common feature of the diverse Aboriginal cultures throughout Australia is orientation: how a particular group of people relate to a communally shared space. Within the boundaries of this shared space are the spiritual connections for each person of the community. This is

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passed along through familial hereditary lines, and spiritual practice is deeply rooted in this area. In relation to the Pitjantjatjara people of the central Northern Territory, Aram Yengoyan recounts that “nearly all physical and environmental features also possess a spiritual counterpart. Each physical step or track signifies a story, myth or legend, emblematically expressing what is happening in a highly overt and literal way” (1993, 239).

What is also important in terms of cultural myth-making is the absence of the idea of the ‘past’. For the Pitjantjatjara, the past tense is absent in the mythic narrative, and its use is not tolerated in the culture. This is a cultural means of maintaining religious value in the present, even though its origination is in the unfathomably distant past (‘unfathomable’ in terms of European linear-time progress belief). The sacred is manifested through linguistic structures, and the use of this approach encourages its continuation into the realm of the present (Yengoyan 1993). This allows the myths’ sacredness to have an everyday existence.

In stark contrast to this practice, Christianity was instituted in a moneyed environment (Burridge 1979). It was a religious teaching that grew from persecution and unrest. Graeber states that, “historically, war, states, and markets all tend to feed off one another. Conquest leads to taxes. Taxes tend to be ways to create markets, which are convenient for soldiers and administrators” (2011, 179). Kenelm Burridge (1979) elucidates that once Christian conversion has created the individual, their rights and duties are informed accordingly: individuality can only be informed through the use of money as the overarching medium of exchange and tool of social relation. This gives weight to the argument that the functions of money fundamentally inform political relationships. Once individuals are recognised and they acknowledge the value of money, they are assimilated into a foreign political economy.

The same political economy prides itself on the notion of being ‘civilised’ and the task of ‘civilising’ others. It remains a pertinent and observable idea that the catch-cry of Western society’s colonial movement be termed as ‘civilising’ or in terms of ‘civilisation’ (Elias 2000). These missions were first undertaken in Europe and then exported to the Americas, honed further in the exploitation of the African continent and then came around full circle as the US became an imperial power and civilisation on its own terms in the nineteenth century, after once being an imperial colonial project in itself (Bowden 2009).

On practically every front, the expansions by colonial European or ‘Western’ empires were determined and aggressive undertakings, comprising violent conquests and the continued suppression of indigenous peoples (Reynolds 1996; Bowden 2009). For Western society to feel righteous in their implementation of colonial processes, it was necessary for their belief 34

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system to be structured and used as a foundation. Christianity aids and abets both qualities of the colonial process (violence and suppression). The gradual techniques of assimilation enacted on colonised peoples either eliminates or merges them into the new dominant culture so as to be no longer recognisable; form the act of suppression. This alienates them from their own mythic narrative and transplants their existence within a new one.

Because the spiritual and intellectual existence of the oppressed was to be transplanted, the general rule was that they would occupy the lowest continuum of the occupying, dominant society (Bowden 2009). The lowest rung would allow the reigns of the conqueror to be applied so that the subordinated peoples were similar enough to be known but differentiated enough to be fit for exploitation. For the people in the positions of privilege of the colonial society— which was essentially any other position along the demarcated continuum—the perks were evident.

Colonies offered their homeland countrymen and approved allies a tantalising and culturally venerated outcome: easy access to substantial profit. They were places where an opportunistic individual could earn more and spend less; where jobs were guaranteed; where wages were high; where careers were accelerated; and where business was more lucrative. A young graduate may be offered a position, administrators may be rewarded with a higher rate, businesspeople may be offered lower taxes, and industrialists may be privy to a plenitude of raw materials and labour at attractive pricing (Memmi 1965). Economic practice was not only culturally important, but also often religiously ordained. Over many centuries, ‘economics’ had become a component, at times rivalling spiritual religion itself, but always aided by religious dogma. Gustafson asserts that the behaviours and rituals involved in the maintenance of ‘economics’ and ‘the market’ resemble Christianity’s religious belief and customs in almost every way but name (2015).

The Book of Genesis (1:26) states “And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.” Spanish theologian and an important apologist for the Spanish colonisation of the Americas, Francisco de Vitoria (ca.1483–1546) referred to the Indigenous peoples of the American continent as ‘sinners’, claiming that it “appears that dominion is founded on the image of God, and as the sinner displays no such image, he has no dominion” (in Brown 2008).

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Shortly after Columbus’s ‘discovery’ of the American continent, which was funded by the Spanish monarchy via the Bank of St George, the modern arguments of international law began to take shape. This form of law was created by Europeans in order to regulate contacts and rights between the ‘civilised’ and ‘uncivilised’ peoples. In the case of Columbus, this was the Spanish and the Indigenous American peoples. With distinct opposition, the process of international law became an essential tool for the oppressor: the colonial process would have been unimaginable without it (Lorimer 1883). De Vitoria is also considered a founding father of modern international law. This particular system of law is inseparably linked to Europe’s ‘civilised’ desire to conquer and subject other native ‘barbaric’ peoples (Bowden 2009).

After the rebellion of the native Tarahumara peoples against the Spanish in Northern Mexico, several missionaries wrote of the continuing risk to Christendom. In ‘New Spain’, the secular and religious authorities blended together so intricately that these perceived offences against the king became offences against God. Missionaries described the motivation of the Tarahumara rebellion as a ‘barbaric’ desire to escape God and King and to live in freedom and vice. They borrowed heavily from the vocabulary of imperialism, describing ‘colonies’ of Christians. Because of the inseparable parallel between colony and mission, the secular authorities’ viewed prospective converts as possible loyal subjects to the Crown. Thus, the practical advantage to the Empire if all subjects were of one religion (Clossey 2007) was unambiguously acknowledged by the administrators of expansion.

Pope Innocent IV again plays an important role in shaping the Christian influence in European mindsets of conquest and market domination. He used the ideal of a universal mission to claim spiritual power beyond the bounds of his civil authority. In 1245, he sent emissaries with two letters to a Mongol leader, in which he used the claim of external holy powers to bolster conviction and assertions of earthly dominion (Clossey 2007). Guyuk Khan, the grandson of Genghis Khan and coronated as the Great Kahn of the Mongols, was presented with the letters from Pope Innocent IV introducing him to Christianity and urging his conversion for fear of further grave errors on the part of Guyuk. The second letter scolded the fury and wretchedness of the Mongols’ invasive military campaigns, in what is now Eastern Europe, claiming that they broke the ‘divine law’. He continued by reprimanding the leader, claiming that he had aroused the wrath of the ‘Divine Majesty’. It closed insisting that he must now humble himself, refrain, and convert, lest he face God’s vengeance in the world to come (Bowden 2009).

In turn, Guyuk sent a letter to Pope Innocent IV in which he claimed that God was obviously on his side. His seizures of the land and annihilation of their peoples were valid and because of their success were obviously on God’s command. He questioned the Pope’s authority and 36

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whether he was sure he was the one who had God’s sanction. Finally, he asked for the Pope to personally come and serve and wait upon him, the head of all Princes, and that he would recognise his submission. Further interactions were cut short as Guyuk died and was succeeded, and Pope Innocent was also succeeded shortly thereafter (Bowden 2009). These arguments over divine sanction reflect the idea of legal dominion over the ‘infidel’ (which could also be substituted with ‘barbarian’). Over the course of Western empire building, these binaries of ‘Christian’ and ‘infidel’ and ‘civilised’ and ‘barbaric’ became further conflated.

This example of the interaction between Pope Innocent and Guyuk Kahn, initiated by Innocent, can be seen as an early version of European assertion of superiority (Wight 1977). It was further consecrated as the Mongol conquest ebbed and missionary activity increased in the fallen Mongolian territories. The Western idea of universality was thereby promoted by Christianity. Through the continued propagation of Christianity and its promotion of a legal, cultural, and linguistic homogenisation (Clossey 2007)—which lends itself well to empire and colonialism—Western universality persists to the current day.

Joseph Pugliese elucidates the racism and ‘othering’ that exists prominently in this universality. He remarks on the combinatory formations and interweaving descriptors that see “the animal and the native … transfixed under a series of disparate yet deeply interconnected signs: the slaveable, the fungible, the feral, the undomesticable, the rogue, the monstrous, the carcass” (2013, 46). This view encapsulates how the ongoing projects of settler-colonialism, the war on terror, and the physical and symbolic violence that accompanies such projects of dominant power are legitimised. This can also be shown when observances of contemporary US imperialism are overlaid with the historical colonial and genocidal history inflicted on native peoples in the Americas. Furthermore, the Aboriginal, the figure of the terrorist, the criminal, and the freedom fighter are legitimated as bodies that can be killed with impunity for they do not belong to the category designated for the truly human. The barbarian is thus disposable. The recurring invocation of Indigenous American signifiers—codenaming Osama bin Laden as ‘Geronimo’, for example—haunts the state’s claim to legitimacy and is a reminder of the civilised versus savage dynamic and its legacy (Pugliese 2013; Osuri and Devadas 2014).

Today it is the US that often holds itself up as the shining light of progress and civilisation, the epitome of a completely developed, individualist, and commercial and consumer society (Bowden 2009). The terrorist incident of 9 September 2001, which unfolded on American soil, had extensive ramifications the world over, especially because it was a clearly documented and visually histrionic attack on a prominent world empire.

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With some decorum to avoid describing the action as ‘holy war’ between the Judeo-Christian Western world and the Islamic East, the then US President George W. Bush described the need to react with war as the “fight for civilization” (Bush 2001). The forming of the attacks of September 11 as an assault by a ‘barbarous’ terrorist organisation and its sponsors on the entire ‘civilised’ world was continually reiterated and fitted easily into existing colonial dichotomies (Bowden 2009). The interaction of human societies, especially in regards to imperialism, leads to volatile conditions. The attacks on the World Trade Center did not change this volatility; people have been massacring each other for these ends from time immemorial. What it did provide was an element of spectacle: it had some poetry in the fact that it was an attack on a major economic marker of the West. It was also filmed and this footage captured the dramatic nature of the incidents. The footage was then able to be replayed and broadcast ad nauseum in media outlets and 24-hour news cycles.

It also marked another spree of interventions by the West in the Middle East and former Levant as well as the increased “security and surveillance” measures adopted domestically in Westernised nations (Pugliese 2013). Once again, familiar expressions of hierarchical chest- beating emerged. There seem to be distinct roles that those in power adopt once conflict arises. The script roles remain the same but the actors change. Shortly after September 2001, Bush held his State of the Union address in which he claimed the “civilized world faces unprecedented dangers”, and he continued to claim that he knew the true nature of regimes such as Iran and Iraq. He claimed that they were hiding things from the civilised world and were the allies of the terrorists. Importantly, he claimed that they were evil, and existed as an evil force (in Chernus 2006, 152).

In a retort to this, Ayman al-Zawahiri, al-Qa’ida’s second in command, similarly spoke of a “dichotomous struggle for God’s sovereignty on earth which eliminates the middle ground and sets the stage for a millennial, eschatological battle between good and evil” (in Wiktorowicz 2005). In the choice of language and the ensuing claims, there is certainly some resemblance with the mediaeval standoff between Pope Innocent IV and the Mongol Emperor Guyuk Khan, replayed once more in contemporary times (Bowden 2009).

Soon after the assaults of September 2001, Bush stated that the “terrorists attacked the World Trade Center, and we will defeat them by expanding and encouraging world trade” (in Finnegan 2003). In retrospect, this seems a telling attitude in shaping the interventionist and occupation wars that unfolded in the aftermath of the terrorist acts. To this day, over ten years after the commencement of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, Australian and American troops

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are still garrisoned in various active military outposts in these regions.

Bush’s encouragement of world trade seems more likely to be coding for the US to act in terms of their economic self-interests in several ways. Firstly, since the US’s high dependence on foreign oil was set to grow substantially in the prelude to the Iraqi invasion, the Iraqi oil reserves (which were the world’s second largest after Saudi Arabia) must have have been a tantalising commodity for the US to possess. Secondly, Saddam Hussein’s decision in 1999 to accept only the euro instead of dollars as payment of export oil was deeply resented by the US, which was already facing a trade deficit and a recession. Since 2000, the US economy had been in a periodic crisis. Thirdly, due to the US world hegemony that already existed in 2000, it was important for the nation to enhance the US corporations and companies involved in its armaments. This would help stimulate segments of its economy and stave off further economic crisis (Custers 2007).

The military invasion and occupation of Iraq presents another important event that can be interpreted through the St George allegory. The US may represent St George as the soldier called to intervene in a Middle Eastern township, and Saddam Hussein may be seen as the dragon, a dictator who was portrayed as a figurehead of evil, hiding the manufacture of nuclear and chemical weapons despite the strict limits on Iraq’s weapon production. Due to Hussein’s alleged links to a terrorist organisation such as al-Qa’ida, the innocent or oppressed city-folk in the allegory can be seen as the common people of Iraq or, perhaps more importantly and accurately in terms of the US’s interests, the American civilian people.

2.2 Responsibilities of Warrior Saints

As Malcolm X observed, “revolution is based on land. Land is the basis of all independence; land is the basis of freedom, justice and equality” (Torricelli and Carroll 1999, 241). Conversely, the denial of land and access to it can be the basis of subjugation, injustice, and subordination. The 2007 Northern Territory National Emergency Response (later renamed ‘Stronger Futures policy’, but colloquially referred to as ‘the Intervention’) provides a contemporary example of such subjugation and injustice. While the Australian Prime Minister John Howard, a Liberal, introduced it, the Intervention passed through parliament with bipartisan support and it was significantly extended by the subsequent Labor government. In 2016, it continues, with no sign of or conversation about an end. The physical force through the covert and implicit use of the Australian military to enter these civilian Australian communities speaks volumes on the Australian psyche, culture, and behaviour.

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Prior to the Intervention, many communities in the region were in the fortunate position of having a substantial amount of recognised legal control over their tribal lands. This was a result of campaigning in earlier decades and its successful culmination in former Prime Minister Whitlam’s pouring of sand back into Gurindji elder Vincent Lingiari’s hand. The Land Rights Act of 1981 has traditionally had the most effect in this area of the continent and Aboriginal people have had a stronger tenure to their land within the Western legal system. Those in power recognised that a more focused and severe strategy was necessary to downgrade the Northern Territory Land Rights autonomy. With the Intervention, people in this area have been subjected to the mandatory weakening and dissolution of their land titles, of which the government has taken greater control. They have faced attrition techniques to force them off more ‘remote’ areas to already overcrowded townships and third party government control of pension and welfare payments.

Harbingers of change were already evident in 2004, with the management of grants being transferred from communities to government’s newly established Indigenous Co-ordination Centres. More ominous were the Amendments of 2006 to the Aboriginal Land Rights Act and the memoranda of agreements that followed. Government had made it clear in these memoranda that it wished to reengage itself more directly in the control of community land through leasing options, with the agenda to open up Aboriginal land for development and mining purposes (Harris 2013). Months before the enactment of the Intervention, the then Minister for Aboriginal Affairs Mal Brough had toured through the impoverished communities of the region, looking to make an important deal with various community leaders.

In 2007, Brough offered the community of Galiwin’ku fifty new houses as well as health and education services if they signed over their land to the government for a compulsory term of ninety-nine years (Saban and Curtis 2010). Their acceptance of these leases would allow various extraction companies (coal, gas, diamond, gold, and uranium) to gain unprecedented access to their lands. This lopsided and exploitative deal was unanimously rejected by the leaders and elders groups to whom it was offered. Later that same year, a government-funded report was published titled “The Little Children Are Sacred” (Wild and Anderson 2007). The report detailed that instances of the possibility for varying types of child abuse were higher in overcrowded and impoverished communities, and cases of neglect were a significant issue. However, this report was then co-opted by the Federal Government, and Brough falsely reported to national media that “every single one [of NT Aboriginal communities] has paedophiles operating in them—now that is a national emergency” (Jones 2007a). John Howard also stated that, “we have decided to act. The decisions we have taken are non- 40

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negotiable” (Jones 2007b). However, all ninety-seven important and constructive recommendations of “The Little Children Are Sacred” report have never been enacted (Saban and Curtis 2010; Pilger 2014).

After two centuries of violent interaction, whether through physical, spiritual, or cultural genocide, assertions that black paedophile rings are operating in the majority of remote communities fits easily into a canon of colonialism produced over the past five centuries. Furthermore, these assertions were made on seemingly credible public programming; for example, Lateline had the lead story of entrenched abuse of Aboriginal children in the Northern Territory (Smith 2006). This report won awards for its coverage and seemingly quality journalism. Brough also did a series of interviews with Lateline and other programs to support the allegations that were first publicised on the television report (Jones 2007a; Trioli 2008).

During the initial Intervention, military infrastructure was deployed into many of the Northern Territory Aboriginal communities (Watson 2009). This included infantry personnel, tanks, trucks, and other military organisations. The rollout was widely broadcast over media platforms and was an interesting exercise in public relations with an element of possible ‘shock and awe’ tactics. Armstrong declares that “for the warrior, the enemy is always monstrous. The antithesis of everything good” (2014, 24). By creating a binary of good versus evil, and a persecutor-victim-rescuer dynamic, the acts mentioned above were able to be sanctioned and executed. The paedophile myth was useful in creating a monstrous entity that essentially fed on youth. This myth is arguably the most severe of the taboos of Western society. It is important to discuss the use of this propagandistic tactic within the context of the Intervention, particularly when these grandiose claims were found to be significantly incorrect. According to figures published in the Courier Mail, of the 7,433 children examined by Intervention doctors, only four cases of possible child abuse were found (Saban and Curtis 2010). Further information was published by the Central Australian Specialists reports, which were compiled by a collective of doctors and specialists in the field of child health that did the groundwork of the health checks. They reported that out of the 11,000 children monitored, only one child was found with a previously undiscovered health condition. It did not involve sexual health or sexual abuse (Pilger 2014). Therefore, through the creation of this sensationalised fiction, a suitable inhuman monster was created and ‘the public’ were either effectively scared enough to support drastic tactics, such as military occupation, or were placated enough to be comfortable in apathy. At best, they were able to condone the measures implemented by the Government. These particular portrayals of Aboriginal people have historical precedent and are easily absorbed into the non-Aboriginal population’s mindset.

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The mobilisation of the military into civilian communities in contemporary Australia was unprecedented. It was a strikingly unusual tactic for camouflaged troops to be a legitimate response to alleged domestic violence and paedophilia (Stringer 2007; Conor 2009). For instance, the community of Mutitjulu, which was featured in the original erroneous Lateline report, was not forewarned of this event. Unsurprisingly, the community was terrified when the Australian army with its soldiers and weaponry arrived unannounced and set up camp in the town centre (Pilger 2014). The rollout fits well into common Western and Christian myths of the ‘foreign (white) liberator’.

Ideas of a foreign force liberating an external population found potent expressions in the aforementioned biblical stories of St George, St Demetrius, and St Theodore. The archetypal plotlines of these oral and written traditions have fed into the blended secular and religious culture of Australia and ‘the West’. Major elements of the 2007 Northern Territory Intervention can be seen to play along key components of this parable. The military, who were predominantly Caucasian-Australian (or ‘white’) entered Aboriginal (or ‘black’ communities) and essentially liberated them from themselves. As part of the propagandist media relations effort, the asserted ‘black paedophile’ took the position of the terrorising ‘monster’ or ‘dragon’. The remaining civilians were then and continue to be forced into several restrictive behaviours, whether it be of movement or finances. Cash flow was (and continues to be) restricted in relation to social welfare being made virtual and government controlled through the segregating ‘Basics cards’ schema. All forms of income, not only welfare and pension payments, were attempted to be controlled, but this goal was unsuccessful (Clark 2009). The income control measures can be aligned with the pressured insistence of assimilation within the St George of Cappadocia tale. In that instance, the assimilation was state-controlled spiritual practice; in this instance, it is state-controlled financial practice.

However, this control is not limited to financial measures. The true insistence of ‘Intervention’ may be made more clear through the restriction of people’s movement. Homeland communities were small offshoots of the central Aboriginal township. These specific plots of land were dictated by family genealogy, otherwise known as ancestral clan estates. In other words, certain clans of different tribal groups were in possession of certain tracts of land. This changed with the manifestation of the ‘Intervention’ and ‘Stronger Futures’ policies. Aboriginal people have been restricted from the usage and visitation of these regions and were pressured to move to larger, allocated townships that were lacking the employment, resources, and housing needed to cope with a larger displaced population.

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Poverty in remote indigenous communities is rife, with low to no available employment; chronic overcrowding in very limited housing; limited public facilities such as running water and sewage systems; and high mortality rates (Wild and Anderson 2007; Pilger 2014). The centuries-old enforcement of calculative commercialisation and cash systems being used to control an impoverished community is indicative of the state’s power and plutocracy operating within Australia (Tandon 2015). This was the backdrop against which the Intervention played out; clearly, these communities would have benefitted from genuine social services access, rather than the measures that were implemented. Adam Tomison draws attention to the fact that “considerable research has shown the association between stressful, negative community conditions, and maladaptive coping behaviour and social dysfunction” (1999, 5). Communities “plagued by various social ills, such as high unemployment, high crime rates, poor transport facilities and poor access to professional services” will bear these dysfunctional behaviours (Tomison 1999, 5). Thus, a mode of tact and understanding would have been a more effective strategy in dealing with these social maladies.

It is important to restate the peculiarity of the crisis being seen as confined only to the bounds of the Northern Territory—that the alleged paedophilic behaviours and the like do not exist or at least are not of ‘emergency’ status in neighbouring Queensland and Western Australia. It is also a curious coincidence that only the Northern Territory had a federal land rights regime, and that it was also earmarked for the opening of a number of new uranium mines and in previous years had government projects scouting for uranium and other precious minerals in the soil of the Territory (Pilger 2014; Watson 2009). Incidentally, a new railway line was also to be built by a consortium, which included a subsidiary of Halliburton. It was routed from Adelaide to Darwin and happened to need to cross Aboriginal homelands to provide easy access to shipping routes (Watson 2009). These activities as they relate to the NT Emergency Intervention to be fitting examples of the colonial process driven by liberation and market desires. As the events unfolded, there were and continue to be easily recognisable identifiers of the ‘known’ civiliser and the dispossessed ‘other’.

This chapter has offered examples of divergent beliefs systems as they exist in contrast to the colonial Christianity that seeks to engulf them. It has elaborated on the mentality of domination and supremacy that fuels the religious and secular assimilatory engulfment. Following these examples were specific instances of people in positions of religious and governing power and how these differing people in differing times have communicated in surprisingly similar ways. The detailed historical analysis with its theoretical underpinning in this and the preceding chapter serve as the motivation and conceptual basis for my studio production. The next chapter will focus specifically on the development of my own studio research, and it will make 43

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evident the relationship between the works of art created and the source material discussed thus far.

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Chapter 3. Lesser Gods and Beyond

3.1 Personal History and Works Preceding the Doctoral Study

The icon is an important visual element and source of inspiration for my studio research. I grew up with icon imagery in my family’s home because of their Roman Catholic beliefs, a legacy of the German family heritage of my maternal grandfather. He was of American nationality (with Scandinavian and German background) and his father was adopted by a German Roman Catholic family. My grandfather was trained as an artist and wished to work in Australia with the remote central desert Aboriginal communities. He and my grandmother immigrated to Australia in 1964. She converted from Lutheran to Catholic after their marriage. For many years, my grandfather worked in desert communities such as Amata, Hermannsburg and Yuendumu, setting up projects like toy-building workshops and working as a bilingual English teacher (Pitjantjara and English).

My paternal grandfather (figure 4) was an Aboriginal man (Marri Ngarr), who was abducted as a child and forced to work from the age of ten as an indentured stockman, primarily in the arid desert regions of Australia. He married my grandmother in the 1950s in Alice Springs and my father was born shortly after, years before the 1967 referendum that granted Aboriginal people greater citizenship rights and allowed them to participate within Australian society at a more ‘human’ level. My father and his siblings grew up in much hardship and abject poverty. This is how the two sides of my family ended up living and meeting in the desert centre of Australia.

Figure 4 My paternal grandfather (centre) with my uncles, aunties, and father (left, sitting in the ute tray), ca.1960.

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My maternal grandmother brought her family’s devout Christianity with her, and I was consequently baptised in the local Alice Springs Catholic church. My great-grandmother gifted me an icon painting of Jesus Christ’s crucifixion to mark the occasion. Eugene Trubetskoi remarks on there being “a harmonious accord [through the use of icons] between the renunciation of the world and prayer for the temporal: motionless divine calm condescends to human prayer for daily bread” (1973, 45). Thus, he recognises the paradox between the reliance on heaven and dependence on earth: put another way, the desire of the symbol versus the need of consumption. Through this icon gifting, my great-grandmother wanted to confer on me access to the heavenly realm. These iconographic images would also be present in the Catholic Church we attended on Sundays (figure 5), which I would stare at disinterestedly until it was time to receive the body of Christ, an excuse for me to get up and have a wafer biscuit.

Figure 5 Our Lady of the Sacred Heart Catholic Church, Alice Springs. View from Anzac Hill. Photographer: Ryan Presley

This ritual of the Eucharist is a curious practice of the church. How Catholics came to believe that bread and wine were the actual body of Christ is intriguing. There are similarities to the ancient pagan practice of acquiring the powers of animal deities through consuming them. This may be a legacy of conversion were pagan tradition or superstition is entangled with Christian doctrine, and later becomes presented as Christian belief. The first documented evidence of the Eucharist is in Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians. The significance here is

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that Paul was native to the province of Cilicia, which was the original centre for the cult of Mithra, where a similar ritual had a pronounced popularity (Parkes 1959).

Looking back on these images and childhood experiences, I have begun to question their value and construction and to consider how the Roman Catholic Church—with its peculiar rituals and beliefs—came to be in a small town in the middle of the Australian continent. The obvious answer of colonialism has spurred many more questions. Questioning this presence has become the underlying impetus for this studio-based research, but it was also the motivation for the works of art preceding the doctoral study.

Figure 6 Ryan Presley Blood Money – 20 Dollar Note – Jandamarra Commemorative 2011. Photographer: Carl Warner.

Important works made prior to my candidature include the Blood Money series (2011, figure 6). These large-scale watercolour paintings represent a visual analysis and exploration of how money is used and manipulated in the Australian context. In particular, I was interested in how publicly circulated designs and imagery contribute to the dominant Australian frameworks of status, power, and ownership. The works speculated upon how these signifiers continue to enforce and flaunt ideals of capitalism, imperialism, and colonialism. The series includes revisions of banknotes that instead promote Aboriginal people whose achievements and actions contrast with or mirror the people currently featured on official Australian currency. I chose to co-opt and alter the imagery on the money to depict heroic and respectable people who resisted colonial onslaught—people who I believe embody struggle, pride, and strength.

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Figure 7 Ryan Presley Chain Reaction: C Patrol 2010 Figure 8 Ryan Presley Chain Reaction: Maneater 2012

Another series of work that influenced and shaped this doctoral study was my Chain Reaction series (2012, figures 7 and 8), an ongoing production of linocuts and works on paper. In this suite, I depict sharks with symbolic motifs and designs that are part of the current Australian police force insignia. These works were made after contemplating the role of the police force in Australia over the last two centuries, personal experiences I have had with police, as well as prominent public cases of police brutality that I have witnessed over the recent years. These works consider questions of the use of violence within society; structures of power and how they function; and the mentality that is necessary to maintain these structures’ continued authority. I have continued to explore these questions in the work produced for this doctoral project, and I have developed and revised the symbols that I created for these earlier works.

My last solo commercial show before candidature, The Good Earth (2012, figure 9), included the final body of work that had prime influence on my doctoral work. At this stage, I began to be particularly interested in how Christian text had influenced or attributed different interpretations to elements of human behaviour. I discovered the ‘Parable of the Sower’ where Jesus was quoted reflecting about seeds finding fertile soil as an allegory for differing people’s openness to new ideas (at least, that is how I understood it at the time). This prompted my studio experimentation with Christian symbology and elements of abstract patterning.

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Figure 9 Ryan Presley Possession 2012. Photographer: Carl Warner.

The work featured in The Good Earth was also important to developing aspects of my practice, as it marked the first time I had used painting on canvas and had experimented with woodcut printmaking. Over the past three years of research, I have continued to experiment with, and increase my use of, these mediums for their salience to my historical and Christian subject matter. I have also sought to continue developing my skills in these areas along with their intelligent application in order to increase my ability to communicate important and interesting visual imagery.

The Good Earth show was composed of works that ranged from oil painting on linen to hand- built ceramic sculpture and woodcut print on paper. This range of works was an important prelude to my doctoral study, as I further cemented my intention to work in a range of mediums, using whichever mode seemed most suitable to present the concept within the work. This objective is evident in the first major work I produced early in my candidature, Warriorism (2013, figure 10a).

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3.2 Warriorism

Figure 10a. Ryan Presley Warriorism 2013. Photographer: Carl Warner.

Warriorism explores my cultural inheritance and the contribution of colonialism in my own life experience: the sum of my parts. The work consists of eight hand-crafted spears that are lodged through a typical white gallery wall, appearing as if they have been thrown. The shafts of the spears (figure 10c) are decorated by my hand-carved designs that refer to and depict my families’ cultural ties—Danish, Swedish, and German from my mother’s family, and Marri Ngarr (Aboriginal) from my father’s family. These patterns are my own blend of old Norse style carving from Scandinavia, with elements of Marri Ngarr family totems, such as abstracted representations of emus and crocodiles. I felt it was important to communicate my standpoint within this research through not only the writing but also the practical production.

The spearheads (figure 10b) reflect my Marri Ngarr heritage through the barbed tips and totemic designs. But these designs are also blended with the designs of Danish metalwork, particularly the decorative sword hilts popular before pre-Christian conversion. The heads

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themselves are executed using advanced three-dimensional printing technology in steel.1 At the time of production, this process was not available in Australia, so my designs were uploaded to a company in Belgium that could complete the method. Given my European heritage, this adds a particular poetic resonance to the work. These elements were intended to show a complex synthesis of old and new, of commonality and difference, and of beauty and violence.

Figure 10b Detail of 3D printed stainless steel spearhead.

Figure 10c Example of one carved section of the oak spear shaft.

The clash of the spears through the white box wall, typical of a gallery, represents a consideration of my own place within the art industry and within the territories of Australian society. The jarring effect of the spears lodged through the wall is intended to communicate the ferocity of such colonialism whether through its encroachment or the resistance to it. It is a reflection on the aggressive presence of British or Western cultures and the now haunting absence of many Aboriginal peoples and cultural infrastructures. My own presence within this country is a tangible by-product of the colonial process and my cultural hybridity is a result of this history. The spears are deliberately cast in the wall in a specific arrangement.

This piece was exhibited as part of the 2013 (invitation-only) National Artists’ Self Portrait Prize at the University of Queensland Art Museum, and then was selected by curator Bruce McLean (QAG/GOMA) to be shown in SOLID: Contemporary Queensland Indigenous Sculpture at the

1 The objects were 3-D printed in stainless steel at imaterialise in Leuven, Belgium. The digitisation of the designs was done by Sam Canning. The document was then uploaded to the imaterialise web platform. 51

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Cairns Regional Gallery in conjunction with the 2014 Cairns Indigenous Art Fair. This was among the first fully realised works of the candidature. 3.3 Lesser Gods 3.3.1 Beginnings of the Lesser Gods Artwork

Much of the research conducted and developed during the main phase of my candidature was encapsulated in a major commission, titled Lesser Gods, for the 2014 Next Wave Festival in Melbourne. Immediately after the close of Next Wave, it was featured as part of the 2014 Human Rights Art and Film Festival in Melbourne. It was then transported to Brisbane and exhibited at Metro Arts shortly thereafter. As part of the commission, I was awarded a budget that allowed me to work with various professionals in their fields for the benefit of the project, including electronic engineers and animators.

The Lesser Gods multimedia installation was made up of various important components. The core of the work was a 13-minute video I produced and directed that consisted of animations and physical paintings I had prepared. I also worked with a professional sound designer to finalise the composition of a specific soundtrack. Large sculptural and physical devices were also included in the installation. They consisted of an interactive dance floor, a theatrical set entrance, and hand-carved gilded wood blocks that were wall mounted within the space (figures 11a, 11b, 12a–d).

The first piece developed in this particular body of works was The Good Shepherd woodcut (figure 11a). This image marked the beginning of my experiment with iconic stylistic forms and the replication of the warrior saint allegories. I have subverted the St George icon by transforming him into a male Aboriginal figure. He is slaying sheep, which are being herded towards a large water python. The python surrounds a void from which a hand emerges, presenting a flame that is then carried by the native Australian fire-hawk.

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Figure 11a Ryan Presley The Good Shepherd 2014. Photographer: Carl Warner.

The fire-hawk is shown in three different stages of flight. This depiction of the bird was part of my initial experimentation in finding a suitable simplified style for animation purposes that still retained enough evocative figurative detail. After completing this work, I was convinced that the animation of this type of imagery had much practical potential, particularly the success of altering the styled mountains of typical iconic tradition. Altering the mountainous rock striations and steps from their typical design of being horizontally layered to being vertically laid matched the ruggedness and graphic appearance of hilly rock formations and mountains on the Australian continent. This effective change was a critical realisation for the subsequent paintings.

As a significant element within the iconographic canon, gold leaf became an important medium within much of the work related to the candidature. In original icons, this sovereign colour/substance was aimed to indicate solar light, faith, fruitfulness, divine intelligence, illuminated truth, divinity, and God himself (Sill 1975; Trubetskoi 1973). Gertrude Grace Sill and John Stuart also note that gold is symbolic for the uncreated, blinding in its splendour as a life force that all other colours depend for their existence. The light is not only symbolic of divine energy, but also timeless eternity. The scenarios typically illustrated on these works were not subject to transient human life; they are part of an “eternal present” (Stuart 1975, 36).

Richard Temple confirms this concept, stating how “icon painting, while using the same picture plane of two dimensions, extends not into the third dimension but rather into the fourth dimension or ‘space-time’, where space is infinity and time is eternity” (2004, 71). This is an important reading in relation to theories of time, which Moxey and others have explored, as noted previously. The suggestion of icons being outside of a linear time partly explains why their use has been continued in this body of work, as I have reconceptualised them as a subversive medium. There is also an important link with treasure, plunder, and the fetishisation of gold in dominant colonial society. This happens to the point where gold is ascribed with such worth that it is seen as intrinsically valuable. The use of gold also enhanced the ability of the icon to work as an expansion device with propagandist qualities.

I experimented with both lacquer-based and water-based gold sizes, and with different methods of gold leaf application. Using water-based size and an adhesive sheet was found to be the best application method. When necessary, I used the static brush transference method to transfer whole leaf sheets. For example, to ensure a tacky or gaudy outcome was avoided, 53

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I tested the possibility of coating the printed woodblock of The Good Shepherd in its entirety with gold leaf. However, this process was achieved successfully and allowed for the block to be re-used and treated as its own individual work. It was renamed as The Golden Calf, and it became a feature work within the Lesser Gods installation. The feat also led to a companion piece being created titled Western Script (figure 11b). The wood was carved with a similar compositional layout as The Good Shepherd. It also portrays a void portal; in this rendition, it is consuming violent police officers who are assembled in a firing squad position. Their targets are three Aboriginal youths, one of whom has prominent body paint design on his arms and torso. The paint implies the shape of a cross. Behind them in the distance are ruins of columns and terraced housing. In the foreground and to the right are a group of women drawing out in the sand the same void that is active in the far left. Along with them are grass-trees adapted to iconic styling as well as the mountain motif that was part of The Good Shepherd composition.

No prints were editioned from Western Script woodblock, nor can prints now be taken from the gilded block, which is a unique work. The composition was an effective mirror to the preceding icon woodblock and when installed facing opposite each other, their narratives had an effective similarity and gave the installation a physical presence that inferred a dichotomy of old and new. The materiality of the woodblock contrasted with the contemporary materials of digital animation and electronic engineering. There was also a mythical element to the Good Shepherd work that contrasted to the modern reality element that formed part of the Western Script. The difference gave their pairing greater conceptual efficacy.

Figure 11b Ryan Presley Western Script 2014. Photographer: Mick Richards.

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Figure 12a Ryan Presley Lesser Gods 2014 (install shot)

Figure 12b Ryan Presley Lesser Gods 2014 (partial install shot)

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Figure 12c Ryan Presley Lesser Gods 2014 (partial install shot – dance floor) Figure 12d Ryan Presley Lesser Gods 2014 (partial install shot – dance floor operation)

3.3.2 Creation of the Lesser Gods Artwork: Influence of the Icon

An overarching objective for this artwork was to create an immersive, original experience for the viewer and this offered the opportunity for me to deploy longstanding musical skills to complement the range of visual mediums.2 I recognised in the acquainted traditions of Christian imagery an effective and dramatic visual canon that could be utilised in a visceral way through stylised animation. This canon was a priority for my studio research and was the first important aspect to draw on in consolidating the Lesser Gods new media project. The convention of icon painting is a beautiful and often disturbing visual tradition; therefore, it was perfectly suited for my intentions.

The relatively rigid traditions of Byzantine and Russian icon painting continue to be practiced and disseminated today including through competing icon-painting courses and instructional videos.3 There are also a number of contemporary practitioners exploiting the icon form or Medieval religious panel. Among them is New Zealand painter Max Gimblett, who has gained an international reputation through exploring the application of gold in his many abstract

2 Several years prior to this project, I had created a stop-motion animation that was a political commentary on the Queensland Government in relation to ‘Stolen Wages’ policy. I titled it Government Gluttony (2008). The clip is available on YouTube under this title. It was made using a cheap, basic Olympus camera that had no ‘onion skinning’ capabilities, on some freeware stop-motion software and on my laptop (which only had 500MB of RAM). I found it to be a tricky, time-consuming, but rewarding process. In this experience, I found an outlet through which I could create my own moving images as well as compose, play, and dub the accompanying music and soundtrack. The Government Gluttony film was screened as part of the BIG SQUARE EYE event of Brisbane Festival in 2008. For several years thereafter, I desired to continue line of studio enquiry and production. 3 For example, see Papadopoulos (2012). 56

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paintings. Vivienne Shark Lewitt in Australia and Dottie Attie in the United States have also produced work taking the form of the traditional small panel painting, but instances of contemporary artists staying close to the traditional icon are relatively rare. An example would be the Australian painter Justin O’Brien.

Icon painting can be an effective communicative tool. They were designed primarily to communicate the narratives of power and value that were described in the previous chapter; they index the presence and prescience of God. Their images were often venerated in such a way that may have been considered idolatry, but historically fit into the cultural norms of those areas at the time. It was commonplace for kisses, prostrations, and reverence to be given to images and symbols of Caesar, so with the influx of Christianity into an imperial realm, these symbols and signs were treated in a similar manner (Eggenberger 1974). With this embrace into the imperial realm, the Christian icon as a representative for God became the parallel recipient of these elaborate rituals that were clearly derived from imperial icon worship (Belting 1994).

The development of the Lesser Gods icons has been done with recognition of and research into the power of the image, especially when connected with the spiritual realm. The idea that images were able to be used as a Bible for the illiterate eventually became the official teaching of the Roman Catholic Church (Belting 1994). The image is accessible to the literate and illiterate because it offers instantaneous communication through its visibility. After bursts of iconoclasm, which were often spurred by political factions and discontent in different regions, a pronouncement was made in 891, which Belting cites as follows:

We prescribe that the icons of our Lord are to be venerated and shown the same honour as is accorded to the Books of the Gospels. For just as all attain salvation through the letters of the Gospel, so likewise do all—the knowing and the ignorant—draw benefit from the pictorial effects of paint. If, therefore, a man does not do homage to the icon of Christ, he also shall not be able to recognise His form at the Second Coming. (1994, 150)

This has interesting parallels to the aforementioned words of John Henrik Clarke on the motive of divine representation to a foreign or subordinated group.

Icons can be used as effective marketing for the consolidation of a spiritual power base. The icon can be read as a potent medium for the expression of ideas. Stuart supports this view by stating how, the art of the icon is based on a similar technique of forming letters. And since the purpose of forming letters is that they should be read and understood, they are designed,

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not so much for the personal satisfaction of the man who writes them, but rather for those who will read them. (1975, 26)

He continues to say how their colour and shapes can be used as a means for the expression of a metaphysical world-view (Stuart 1975). With this recognition, I have used the icon as an inversion and a vehicle for political and social expression.

Informed by Old Testament Trinity (figure 13a), I created the early test work Consultation (figure 13b). It reflects upon the Intervention in the Northern Territory, discussed in the previous chapter. The image formed the first scene of the Lesser Gods (2014) video. Three Aboriginal men replace the angel figures to compose the trinity. The central figure draws out the map of Melbourne’s central business district (since the work was first shown in Melbourne’s Federation Square). The title Consultation ironically references the Intervention’s rollout under false, misleading, and egregious pretenses. This was followed by the blanket application of policies onto a large variety of different communities, each with different dynamics and needs. As the scene continues, the boomerangs start clapping of their own accord, the central figure finishes drawing the map, and the three men nod in unison. Here I was able to continue to experiment with the warped, two-dimensional representation that is typical of iconic image construction.

Figure 13a Artist unknown Old Testament Trinity 17th century Figure 13b Ryan Presley Consultation 2014. Photographer: Carl Warner.

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Through completing Consultation, I realised the need to have a more vibrant and diverse range of subjects, protagonists, and gender represented in subsequent pieces. It became apparent that the three older men in this work can conform too easily to idealised representations of Aboriginal people. Growing up in Alice Springs, I often saw men around who looked this way— for example, my grandfather resembled these men. The problem, however, is that this illustration may read comfortably to the lay viewer as being too reliant on stereotypical depictions of Aboriginal people.

My work Transfiguration (figure 14b) is an interpretation of a popular icon of the same name that has been depicted a multitude of times by different schools. This image formed the second major scene of the Lesser Gods film. The referenced image depicts Jesus Christ’s transfiguration on Mount Tabor and the shock and admiration of the disciples who witnessed this event (figure 14a). The central triangular composition of the figures within this image was a key aspect in formatting the Transfiguration 2014 piece. Arguably, the composition can be interpreted as being of a hierarchical nature: Christ as leader, disciple as follower.

Figure 14a Cretan School Transfiguration 16th century Figure 14b Ryan Presley Transfiguration 2014. Photographer: Carl Warner.

Shortly before I began the design of this work, an unarmed Aboriginal woman was brutally assaulted by police officers in the Brisbane region. She was shot in the face with a taser, leading to severe and irreparable blindness in one eye (Bochenski 2014). The senior

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constable who shot her was not only trained in taser use but was also responsible for training other police in correct taser usage (McMahon 2014). Notably, police are instructed not to shoot above the chest. Nevertheless, over two years later, the policeman responsible remains on duty. In part, the Transfiguration scene addresses this scenario and refers to the historical subjugation of women in Western culture and the prevalence of patriarchy that continues into the current era. Over the past few centuries in Australia, the purposeful and violent disempowerment and dispossession of Aboriginal peoples by the British and European coloniser has created a power divide between Aboriginal and colonial peoples. The extremes of this power divide are particularly evident between white men and non-white women; in this case, white men and Aboriginal women. There is massive amount of historical evidence surrounding the commercialisation of Aboriginal women as a resource for white men as commodities of sex and labour (e.g., Clark 1983; Gilbert 1973).

By arming a young Aboriginal woman with a weapon and placing her at the focal point of the power pyramid structure, I have attempted to engage with and undercut this recent imposition. She stands above two symbolic forms of the martial industry of oppression contained in Western culture: the police and the military. It was aimed to illustrate her as contemplative yet confident and assertive, while the police and military officials are captive yet resentful.

The figures are surrounded by decrepit buildings of British architectural style housing that are common in highly populated cities of the Australian coast. Aboriginal peoples are typically the burden bearer of colonial conquest, expansion, and appropriation. Therefore, the decrepit illustration of the building is a reference to this burden and its effects. It can also be read as the ruins of an empire, as signalled by the change in power structures, illustrated by the focal figure. This is an invocation of the empowered individual, which references a concept of Christianity and Western value (Burridge 1979). The scenery reflects the higher instance of religious conversion in Aboriginal communities closer to coastal colonial contact (Kenny 2007). It is in these compositional choices that the spatial and temporal freedoms allowed by iconic tradition manifest and become evident.

It is important to understand the socioeconomic factors that dictated the religious conversion of many Aboriginal peoples, including severe dispossession and substantial ‘white’-inflicted violence and occupation (Connors 2005). Yengoyan claims that this was a conversion imposed by “economic need or social deprivation or both. In such examples, the ‘tribal’ ethic or structure has been destroyed with much of the Aboriginal population” (1993, 234). Therefore, religious conversion is synonymous with the colonial process. 60

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With these concepts of dispossession and power in mind, the fantastical scene sought to exemplify a situation where the corrupt police officer is subject to their own maltreatment. In the animated version of this image, the female protagonist slowly and measuredly swings her arm, with the taser in hand, from side to side. She thoughtfully deliberates on whether to discharge the weapon. This continues for a time until she abruptly pulls the trigger. The shot hits the police officer and he rises due to the current and begins to dance a disco-inspired choreography (figure 15).

Figure 15 Ryan Presley dishonourable-discharge-fever 2014. Photographer: Carl Warner.

The macabre dance continues for some time before the policeman begins to tire; periodically, his body is wrapped in electrical current and his dance resumes. He continues dancing until he can take no more voltage and he lies down on the ground, apparently either unconscious or dead. His limelight fades and the image returns of the woman and to border patrol military guards. The guards have tears streaming down their faces.

Due to the horrific nature of the taser brutality incident that informed it, this work showed a reversal of the victim and perpetrator roles. By having the police officer dance in such a parodied style and genre of music, the work highlighted the lack of responsibility the actual officer took for the maiming. The scene mirrors and illustrates the casual nonchalance that is 61

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exhibited by the senior officials and the broader community to allow the person to keep working in their role of power when they have obviously demonstrated that they are a danger to people within the general community.

When the installation was exhibited in Melbourne in 2014, I observed an unexpected and notable public reaction to this particular scene. Three young Caucasian girls, probably in the age range of 10 to 12, walked confidently and without parental supervision into the hell-mouth entrance of the show. They then assembled onto the dance floor (figure 16) in a triangular formation and awaited the taser scene. Once the police officer was shot and arose from the current, all three girls in unison, mimicked perfectly the dance choreography that the officer performed right up until the point where he lays down; they each laid down on the dance floor in the same way.

This response taught me about the unpredictable ways that people can interact and participate with an artwork. The dance floor was often only able to be activated by an adult body mass, so it ended up being a frustration for interested children as they were sometimes too light to trigger the weight sensor that activated the bright white LED light of the individual plates or to trigger the unique sounds of each plate. Thus, for these three dancing children, the dance floor served more as a backdrop to their own performance than an interactive feature. Generally, the sounds programmed through the dance floor tiles and the backing soundtrack were broadcast by a powered audio setup and speakers that were installed in the space behind the hell-mouth entrance. The backing soundtrack was continuously played at volume.

Figure 16 Ryan Presley Lesser Gods 2014 (partial install shot) 62

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The third and final prominent icon-style scene in the video is titled Payback: Law and Punishment (figure 17b). It marks my second reinterpretation of icons that portray St George and the Dragon (figure 17a). As laid out in Chapter 1, this story is given weight, at least historically, by situations of debt. The dragon can be emblematic of the usurer or creditor, while the ‘tender youths’ are sacrificed as debt tokens or collateral into peonage. Tellingly, the dragon attempts to expand beyond the existing power base and hierarchy by demanding the king’s family.

In keeping with my aim to feature a variety of Aboriginal protagonists, in this image, I illustrated a light-skinned, teenage Aboriginal male. He is riding atop a water buffalo, which, according to my Marri Ngarr oral history, predates white missionaries in the Top End Northern Territory. The water buffalo is a substitute for the typical white horse treatment.

Figure 17a Unknown artist St George and the Dragon 16th century Figure 17b Ryan Presley Payback 2014. Photographer: Carl Warner.

The persecution and disbanding of the Knights Templar due to their expansion and perceived financial and power threat to existing dominion serves as an important example of the parable coming full circle (Howarth 1982). Once the Knights Templar were inspired and held dear, with this parable of the warrior being their role model. Then as their power became viewed as a menace, the same Templar organisation moved position to that of the dragon. Interesting also is that the citizen is liberated by a foreign armed force and certain provisions must be made for ‘services’ of this armed force.

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The apparent substitution of a dragon with a judge references the St George allegory; the judge represents the dragon as an entity of power threatening a particular community. Notably, German legal theorist Rudolf von Jhering remarks that “ancient Rome had conquered the world three times: the first time through its armies, the second through its religion and the third through its laws” (cited in Graeber 2011, 198). Through the myth of St George, it is possible to identify aspects of these three elements; through colonial history, the heritage of Roman tradition and violence is apparent.

The composition of this work was influenced by the 2009 murder of an Aboriginal man by five white males, who were later dubbed the ‘Ute Five’. The murder occurred in my home town of Alice Springs. The Ute Five had spent an alcohol-fuelled evening driving up and down the Todd Riverbed, abusing Aboriginal people camping in the area, shouting at them, ‘niggers’, ‘black bastards’, and firing off blanks from a replica Colt 45 pistol that they were aiming at various people. They were also attempting to run over sleeping Aboriginal people with their four-wheel drive utility vehicle. Shortly after this, they drove past a man whom they recognised as being a victim of their earlier harassment. They quickly braked, proceeded to perform a U- turn, and pursued the man. They then violently assaulted him by kicking and punching him and breaking bottles over his head. He died at the scene. The murderers then worked on a false alibi while continuing a drinking bender. They evaded police for a week thereafter (Graham 2010; Jackson 2013).

Once the police had custody of the five defendants, only one co-operated, although his testimony was later found to be false. The five men were charged with murder and multiple charges of reckless endangerment. Later, this was strangely downgraded to ‘manslaughter due to negligence’. Before the sentencing, the Chief Justice described the murderers as being of ‘good nature’ and ‘good character’, and that their actions were based on some ‘hooning’ and that their violence was ‘relatively minor’. They were each charged with prison terms barely reaching three years. That night, relatives of the defendants threw a party to celebrate the verdict that went on well into the next morning (Graham 2010; Jackson 2013; Storr 2010).

Upon their release, the five men were ordered by the court to pay a shared amount of $180,000 to the aggrieved mother and family. Despite all being in their mid-to-late twenties and employed, they successfully lobbied to the Australian Financial Security Authority to be declared bankrupt, which allowed them to forego their payment. The perpetrators scoffed at the thought of paying any compensation and labelled it as ‘ridiculous’ (Jackson 2013). This has interesting connections to the traditions of debt and blood monies. It also highlights the supreme privilege of white patriarchal society as it stands today. 64

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In the revised icon, the judge is illustrated as a negative force, lying in place of the dragon. He is a negative force that allows for the destruction of our youth, future, and community. Incarceration rates in Australia of Aboriginal people outnumber that of Africans in South Africa at the height of apartheid. Aboriginal people make up 2.5% of the population but over 26% of the total prison population, which is blaringly disproportionate (Simpson and Doyle 2013). This ‘Ute Five’ case shows the flipside of Aboriginal oppression. The Aboriginal youth in the icon image is shown as the liberator: empowered and determined.

As the confrontation between the youth and the judge progresses in the video, the judge bitterly fights against the spearing punishment which is to be his fate. The young man then proceeds to kill the judge with a spear, typical of the St George icon, and then pulls it back from the judge’s dead body. In the foreground, a courtroom gavel hits an illuminated soundblock that reverberates with disco or arcade lighting style colours. The landscape is depicted in a synthesised icon style that is imbued with stylised features of the Australian continent. Icons typically have a surprising amount of natural landscape elements and the painters would often turn to nature to explore their problems of existence and search for fundamental truths. This insight and observation is something that enthuses me about icon style work. For the artists of these works to successfully portray rocks or ranges in the background of their works, they had to base them on accurate observation in order for the natural object to be successfully abstracted into representative or symbolic design (Stuart 1975).

At the early point of studio production, I was still deciding how to incorporate sound and its representation in a visually appealing way. I serendipitously chanced upon an article about two composers who claimed to have decoded a hidden score within a Scottish chapel’s architecture. They believed that the intricately carved ornamental boxes on the Rosslyn Chapel ceilings are actually representations based on Cymatic patterning; physical phenomena that are created by the vibration of different pitches. Through their ‘decoding’, these composers created what they believe to be a secretive religious score that was encoded for fear of ‘heresy’ (“Team Cracks Chapel’s Musical Code” 2007). The St Clair (now Sinclair) family, who were responsible for the construction of the chapel and still own it to this day, insist the ornamental boxes are representations of their family coat of arms (Chaudhry 2005). Conspiracy theorists are still often attracted to this temple following disproven rumours that it holds the mythical Holy Grail in its crypt and that the chapel was influenced by surviving Knights Templar. Both of these theories have been discredited; the Knights Templar had been

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dissolved and their vast tracts of land and monetary holdings expropriated in preceding centuries (Chaudhry 2005).

The discovery of the science of Cymatics was however a Eureka moment for me in terms of forming the Lesser Gods project. It provided a viable avenue of studio exploration and a basis for representing pitch in visual patternation. Given the screening of the work within a well- attended festival environment, it was opportune to incorporate an interactive element to the work.

My idea to have an interactive dance platform that would simultaneously trigger different sounds and illuminate may have been influenced by a scene I had watched of the Tom Hanks’ movie Big (1988), where the lead character and his boss play ‘Chopsticks’ on a large floor- based synthetic keyboard. Over the years, I (like many others) had also viewed the music video for Michael Jackson’s Billie Jean (1982). The dance choreography and the scenes where the footpath lights up as Jackson walks and dances across the different pavers were of particular interest. After seeing this video time and again, I assumed that the technology to achieve this effect must have existed for some time. However, upon further research, I discovered that a lighting technician was behind the camera, manually operating the lights and doing his best to simultaneously illuminate the individual pavers as Jackson moved across them. On further viewing, this is noticeable in the film clip—the lights do not accurately correspond to Jackson’s presence (Hawksley 2014).

At this point, I approached Robert Andrew to work on the project. He is also a contemporary visual artist but previously worked as an electrical engineer for several decades and has a skill set that appeared to be suited to bringing the work to fruition. Through a grant related to the Next Wave Festival, the project was successfully funded with a small but feasible budget. Due to the budget and my consultations with Robert Andrew, I was able to design and source materials and electronic devices that would allow the interactive dance-floor to become a reality.4 We were able to activate each of the tiles (a grid of sixteen) with their own pressure sensor, individual LED light functioning, and reprogrammable sound trigger. This reprogrammable element meant that the individual tile device was able to have different sounds attributed to it through a MIDI console that was attached to a laptop. In turn, this meant that each dance pad tile was effectively like the key to a synthesiser: it could be programmed to trigger an array of different sounds.

4 Without Robert Andrew’s hard work, knowledge, and generosity, this work would have never been realised to the success that it was. 66

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Figure 18 Audience member activating Lesser Gods dance floor tile 2014. Photographer: Eugyeene Teh.

Practical elements, such as the structural safety and integrity of the work, were also taken into account. I considered the use of acrylic (i.e., Perspex), but this material tends to shatter with too much pressure and the higher grades of thickness are particularly expensive. In the end, polycarbonate was decided as the final material, as it is both highly resilient to weight and pressure while still withstanding engraving. It is also a more cost-effective material than acrylic. Each of the polycarbonate surfaces were engraved with my Cymatic inspired designs, each one attributed to a different note in varying octaves. The designs were etched with high precision by a CNC Router.

When plotting out the musical score for this work first began, I was under the impression that the Cymatic geometry was static for each different pitch variation. This meant that each note in a scale had a specific, unchanging geometrical representation. With further experimentation, I found this not to be the case. When sound is run through a vibration plate, the corresponding pattern that is created is defined by several variables. Variables can include the position and density of where the pitch is created in the plate, the size of the plate, the shape of the plate, and the power of the vibrational generation, to name the most obvious. In terms of physics, the vibrational waves created by the generator are shifting through the plate and reflect from the edges, moving back towards the centre (locus of vibration in this

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experiment). So the two waves intersect, nullifying each other when in opposition (creating a dead space or ‘node’) and adding to each other when in unison (creating a live space or ‘antinode’). This dead space is where the salt or sand rests in Cymatic experiments and is why higher frequencies (or pitches) result in more complex patternation: there is more energy being run through the plate so more nodes and antinodes are created in the ‘resonant modes’ (Jenny 1974). In Cymatic experiments that I set up at home, I tried the exact same frequency with slight changes in some of the aforementioned variables and found that the geometrical patterns that resulted were vastly different. Thus, I realised that my initial understanding was incorrect; that a set geometric configuration was not universal and would not repetitively match to any one pitch if any of a large array of variables were altered.

Figure 19 Photo documentation of Cymatic experimentation 2014

This affected my planning, as I had hoped to easily decipher a set group of visual patterns for the specific octaves of notes that were needed. Due to finding no static formula and not having the time or resources to conduct further intensive Cymatic experiments, I drew upon the work of Ernst Chladni (1756–1826) and employed the original research and documentation of his work with vibrating plates (Jackson 2006). I used the records of patterns that he found in his early bow resonance studies as the stylistic basis for the Lesser Gods Cymatic designs.

The Cymatic-based images I created were a major component of the Lesser Gods video. They were the conceptual bridge that linked the dance floor’s participatory element to the projected animation. Consisting of bold, graphic geometric designs that included a detailed painted symbol that was often at the centre of the image, their incorporation allowed for an additional narrative throughout the video. In most cases, the overlaying symbol was a common signifier in the visual Christian canon, such as a skull, roman columns, roses, church bells, and crowns, 68

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to name a few. The background Cymatics patterns were animated to change and morph into the next pattern as the sequence of notes in the accompanying soundtrack changed.

Figure 20 Ryan Presley Heretic Cymatic series 2014 (select images). Photographer: Carl Warner.

These images were shown as a ‘chorus’ style interjection between the three figurative icon works and their narratives. Conceptually, this allowed a push–pull dynamic to develop within the video, as the ‘verse’ showed the idyllic fantasy scenes of the icon style, while the ‘chorus’ was darker, more intense, and the soundtrack more prominent. The verse section was heavenly, with visual enactments of justice, string orchestral accompaniment, and arpeggiated piano. The chorus section was hellish, with nightmarish Cymatic changes, driving bass, and ghoulish effects laden with guitar and harpsichord.

Over the separate choruses shown, slight changes arose in the overlaying symbols. For example, in the first chorus, the rose is blooming, and in the next, it wilts (figure 20). This was done to add some body of narrative and connection between the choruses themselves. The underlying melody that connects the whole verse and chorus variations together is based on the Australian national anthem. I mainly chose it for its inherent link to nationalism, which is one of the most dangerous social ills of our time, especially for a state identity that is founded on genocidal colonialism, acts of false interventionist logic, and practices cruel xenophobia.

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Figure 21 Photo documentation of Heretic Cymatic sequencing production 2014

Due to the clear lyrical intent of the anthem, it seemed to be an appropriate vehicle to mirror and use as social commentary. A scored version was available that was already transposed in the right key, so that it could be easily configured to my Cymatic filtering and encoded into the overall work. Jacques Attali uncovers the elitist Western goal to “transcribe music into language or language into music”. He continues, describing a will to “construct a universal language operating on the same scale as the exchanges made necessary by colonial expansion: music, a flexible code, was dreamed of as an instrument of world unification, the language of all the mighty” (1985, 92).

The concept of a language being coded in music is connected to the idea of military order and imperial universality (Attali 1985). Appropriating these codes of the Australian National Anthem effectively obscured an immediate recognition of its melody but still heavily implied and summoned its themes during the ‘chorus’ section. In this section, the Heretic Cymatic flashes in the projection simultaneously invite and dictate the participant to activate and follow the prescribed tile phrasing or configuration. If successfully followed, the complete melody sequence is sounded; if unsuccessful, then only partial chunks are sounded. Furthermore, although they may not be the complete or correct sequence, the soundings are still only within the prescribed framework of melody made available.

The biggest obstacle in the production process was managing this aspect of coding and desired depiction and then communicating it effectively to the necessary staff working on the

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project. In order to effectively communicate the sequencing needs for both the animation and accompanying musical score, I created instruction manuals that outlined the order of the imagery and which parts of the melody they corresponded with (figure 21). The document also bore annotated instructions on how the symbols were to move and act, serving as a reminder after the meetings about the project where I had elaborated on the direction of the scenes.

This was my first experience of managing a project team of six people and I spent considerable time attempting to align the sound designer with my expectations and to bring him to work in tandem with the team of animators (figure 22).

Figure 22 Example documentation of Heretic Cymatic sequencing – initial brief 2014

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Figure 23 Example documentation of Heretic Cymatic sequencing – final brief 2014

Ultimately, the lack of perfect integration of sound and animation led to some degree of compromise but the final brief was created (as seen in figure 23). The animation team had been forced to shift the Heretic Cymatic animation to fit the music instead of them working in tandem (compare figure 22 to figure 23). This experience became a major lesson in terms of the different dynamics people that bring to a project and the different management needs that are required when overseeing a team-developed project.

As the Payback scene progresses in the video, a bridge of repeating notes emerges that lead into the final scene, Out to Sea. In the drafts of the soundtrack, there was a noticeably clear grouping of repeating xylophonic notes and consequently I decided to make some minor alterations to the Heretic Cymatic imagery to follow suit. There was a vision to switch in white and gold as the background colour scheme to fit the saccharine melody better than the previous common background colour schemes of red, black, and purple. The benefit of using such programs as Photoshop CC and Premier Pro CC is that the flat surface paintings were able to be divided digitally into different layers. So by quickly mimicking the necessary Cymatic background with white and gold in the studio, photographing it and then sending the digital file

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to the animation team, this effect was able to be easily incorporated. The prime animators were able to change the backgrounds while keeping in the necessary symbolic overlay (for example, the skull or golden laurel); figure 24 below illustrates this.

Figure 24 Example of beating heart motif with change in Cymatic background. Image on far right is the resulting digital still.

This aspect of production came to be one of the most interesting and rewarding of the visual process, and I better understood the possibilities that the software offers. Lessons on how to work effectively in order to meet an exhibition deadline while still maintaining a level of quality in the visual work were also learnt. Layer separation also allowed the Payback scene to be extended. For the second appearance of the scene in the video, the animators were directed to remove the buffalo-riding protagonist and insert a rising fortification around the background city skyline (figure 25).

Figure 25 Changes were inserted to develop the scene in Payback. Image on the far right is the resulting digital still.

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This alteration in layering proved to be a useful technique to smoothly transition to the ‘bridge’ section of the film. As noted above, the final part of the film was named Out to Sea. It consisted as a quiet, moody part of the piece. It was used as a passage to bridge from the end of the film back to the beginning. This was necessary as the work was played in a continuous loop over the day-time opening hours of the installation site.

Out to Sea consists of a wave pattern painting that was also broken into layers. These layers were then set onto different tracks of motion, mimicking the rolling of an ocean. The soundtrack comprises a gothic choir and an organ mixed with electronic sound effects of screeching and wailing. Bursts of figurative elements are synchronised with the soundtracks wails. The figures include groups of Great White Shark dorsal fins, orange lifeboats, and Aboriginal men being consumed by sharks erupting from the waters (figure 26).

Figure 26 The figures on the left were designed to be spliced into the wave animation. The image on the far right is the resulting digital still.

The shark-consuming-man motif was inspired by the popular iconic depiction of Jonah and the Whale. The story of Jonah entails him being swallowed by a ‘great fish’ for his disobedience to God. Jonah chose not to preach to a foreign enemy city and as punishment while on his travels across a body of water, God conjured a severe storm that led to Jonah being swallowed by a giant fish for a period of three days. He prayed and pleaded to God while he was inside the fish’s stomach, supposedly survived, and emerged after the few days. The overarching theme of this story is often compared to Christ’s resurrection, or death and resurrection in general. This story also exists in Islam and is depicted in similar compositions of Jonah caught in the fish’s mouth (Sill 1975).

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Figure 27 Leviathan scales emerging from Out to Sea section 2014

The opening section of Out to Sea includes an abstracted version of a shadowy crocodile under the water and then its back scales emerging from the depths (figure 27). This was an important link to the entrance of the installation, which is of a stylised crocodile’s mouth. The entrance was a reference to the Leviathan monster, typically a sea monster, of the Christian biblical texts. In Medieval Christian artwork, this creature would often form the gates of hell; referred to commonly as the ‘hell-mouth’ (Sill 1975).

Design of the entrance piece was done specifically to differentiate the installation from the outside world. It was an important part of the conceptual undertaking that the audience knowingly enter this differentiated space—to acceptingly enter a beast’s mouth through an ornamented portal style doorway and conceptually take temporary residence in its belly. In order to achieve this construction, hand-drawn schematics were digitised to virtually create the work. The designs were then uploaded to a CNC routing company in Melbourne, which then delivered the cut timber and MDF to a set designer. The painting and construction of the entrance piece was overseen and tested in preparation for the exhibition. The piece was designed with the objectives that it had to be easily assembled, lightweight, easily demountable, and able to be packed for travel for its later tour to Metro Arts in Brisbane.

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Figure 28a Hell-mouth, preliminary sketch design Figure 28b Hell-mouth digitised design – exploded view

Figure 28c Hell-mouth install shot, Lesser Gods, Metro Arts Brisbane 2014

The varying mediums and components of this installation allowed for much experimentation in style and expression. It also gave more scope for things to go wrong. However, the great majority of processes and final exhibitions of the work were very successful. According to the staff’s record keeping, in its two-week run as part of the Human Rights Art and Film Festival, the Lesser Gods show was attended by an average of sixty people per day. Due to the limited budget, timeframe, and experimental nature of the show, the work was an ideal example or demonstration of further potential. With more resources, it is possible that this piece has vast a prospective for smoother, more developed, and ornamented incarnations. As an artist, I had great exposure to a variety of different and important responsibilities as well as diverse and innovative forms of visual invention.

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This section of the chapter has explored different concepts and mechanisms that were utilised in order to create the Lesser Gods installation work and give it efficacy and meaning. The Lesser Gods project was a mammoth undertaking and the work will not be re-installed in the final exhibition; however, the next section of the chapter describes the works that are to be included in this final display. The works were acutely informed by this prior installation experience and artwork.

3.4 After Lesser Gods

3.4.1 Bedburner In 2014, I was selected to work on a commissioned textile project to be completed in 2015 by the Cairns Regional Gallery. The show was titled Out of Queensland: New Indigenous Textiles. The aim of the initiative was to enlist eight Aboriginal visual artists to each collaborate with an experienced textile designer, Bobbie Ruben, to create a design that was able to be repeated as a motif on an extensive length of fabric. All designs were to be digitally printed directly onto the selected fabric.

This was an opportunity to develop and extend the Lesser Gods work’s motifs and meanings in a substantially different medium. Due to my interest in depicting unrepresented or suppressed actions of our society, I decided to use the Out to Sea scene as the basis for this new project. Out to Sea was a reaction to the seemingly foreign or frontier exploits involving oppressed peoples happening within our society that are sometimes masked from the view of the capital cities. Often they are obscured in terms of physical distance (i.e. the Indonesian oceans) or are actively controlled through government constraints such as the denial of media access to refugee detention centres in Christmas Island and Nauru. The vehicle of iconic tradition is useful to visually communicate these issues; since Christianity’s inception, icons have wrestled with the depiction of an invisible god through visible image (Barasch 1992). So in this work I aimed to recast the purposely suppressed as intentionally broadcast and broadcast with repetition. I titled the work Bedburner (2014, figure 32).

Due to the government and the state that it serves, contemporary iconography offers images that are recognisable and suitable for conjecture and reworking. Jean Gottman (1952) describes the actions of state ‘iconography’ as encompassing the national flag, memorials of past history, principles of the prevailing religion, the generally accepted rules of economics, the established social hierarchy, and heroes quoted in schooling. I chose the Australian national flag to be the compositional basis of the Bedburner image.

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Nationalism partially owes its existence to European romanticism and accompanying Christian ideals. The global phenomena of oceans, seas, river networks, and mountain ranges often give an impression of the ‘eternal’ and ‘God-given’, especially if a deity is used to justify and comprehend existence. Nationalism in set within geographical limits where a population can decree a God-given place and a God-given soil (Gottman 1952; Bosworth 2007). Within this Bedburner image, there is only ocean, contrasted with a patterned void.

Figure 29 Ryan Presley Bedburner I 2014. Photographer: Carl Warner.

Some argue that patriotism differs from nationalism, with patriotism being of more benevolent bearing (Webster 2011; Skitka 2006). However, in times of crisis, or periods of at least a perceived crisis, the difference between these two functions occupies slightly different positions on the same spectrum at best. There are times in recent Australian history where designated patriotic revelry is hard to distinguish from xenophobic nationalism and in-group versus out-group derogation.

Flags may be regarded as sites for the contestation of values (Fozdar, Spittles, and Hatley 2015). They differ from other state symbols because they are not state monopolised. The flag can therefore be seen as gifted to ‘the people’ who are encouraged to proliferate its usage 78

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and in doing so maintain its relevance (Orr 2010). Meaning is sealed through the symbol being embedded in cultural practice and its availability as part of the ‘performance’ of nationalism (Kemmelmeier and Winter 2008; Dunn 2009).

Overt expressions of nationalism always run the risk of being exclusionary. This risk may be particularly volatile in Australia with its colonial history and enforced state policies of segregation. An obvious recent, publicised incident were the 2005 Cronulla Riots (Dunn 2009). A less-reported incident followed in 2009 where at Australia Day festivities in Sydney, Anglo- Australians sought out dark-skinned attendees. They then forced the people of varying brown complexions to kiss the flag, threatening them with verbal and physical violence for non- compliance (Huxley 2009; McAllister 2012). In these acts, there are remarkable similarities to historical behaviours such as prostrations to the idol of the emperor, then to the religious icon. St George’s threat to the populace to convert to Christianity also has reverberation in this example of forceful worship.

These events resemble microcosms of global events such as the invasion of Iraq. I posit that without this existing behaviour within the civilian community, greater ‘accomplishments’ such as the occupation of various places within the Middle East would not be possible. Modern nationalism allows for the creation of two irreconcilable and warring camps – the individual’s own nation in opposition to all other nations. It repudiates civility and tolerance of difference (Grosby 2005). Hence, the inevitability of international law.

The reservoir of nationalistic pride and fear may be readily tapped into by state powers. The overt ‘flag waving’ and more covert ‘flag hanging’ provide a well-spring of symbolic association that a state may exploit for military campaign. Nationalism is often cultivated in the forms or guises of patriotism, and because of this patriotism is not a benign presence. Webster relates this ability as “relevant to the post 9/11 events leading to the U.S. invasion of Iraq” (2005, 5). In Australia, there is a nationalistic anxiety over border inviolability, heightened by the geopolitical bearing as an island-state. The tendency for defensive border politics, and the obsessive enforcement that is run in tandem, has become one of the dominant expressions of attachment to the nation (Hage 2003).

Enforcement has come in the form of repeated ‘interventions’ on boats and watercraft carrying refugees and asylum seekers in demarcated Australian waters. Asylum seekers have served as a political scapegoat, from the ‘children thrown overboard’ concoction of the Howard government era (Marr 2006) to the PNG solution of the Rudd government, to the mandatory detention of refugees on the pacific island of Nauru. The multiple incidences of refugees being 79

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taken off the smugglers’ boats, put in expensive orange life boats and towed back into Indonesian waters and left adrift (while the smugglers boats are exploded at sea by Australian Border Patrol with thrown grenades) is a major violation of international law, and telling of the psychological climate of the Australian nation-state. This political action and national paranoia are referred to in the Bedburner design.

It was imperative for the drafting of the work to take into account the need for the image to be mirrored and continuously repeated. Precise design planning was done to make sure that the wave motif that was at the top of the image matched in the reverse at the bottom of the image (See Fig 30.). Achieving this match allowed for a fluid and somewhat seamless transition from one repetition of the image to the mirrored version above and below it, so as to run the length of the 14-metre fabric print.

Figure 30 Ryan Presley Sketches for Bedburner textile 2014

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Figure 31 Ryan Presley Bedburner 2014

Shortly after this work was created, a slew of stories arose in the media detailing recent incidences that had occurred in Northern Territory Youth Detention facilities. In the Northern Territory, 98% of the youth detained and incarcerated are Aboriginal. Some of the prisons only house Aboriginal people (Georgatos 2014; Pilger 2014). Various activities by staff and corrections officers were detailed in these media reports.

Horrifyingly, the same restraint chairs as those used in the torture and interrogation of prisoners in Guantanamo Bay are actively used in Northern Territory Youth Detention facilities. In March 2015, one youth was hooded, strapped into a restraint chair by the ankles, waist, shoulders, and arms and held there for 1 hour and 50 minutes. He had threatened to break his own hand in order to go to hospital. In response to this occurrence, the Minister for the NT Correctional Services responded by saying, “prisons and juvenile detention facilities aren't necessarily pleasant places” (Wild 2015a). The event was videotaped; however, the media was denied access to the footage (Wild 2015a, 2015b). Other alleged events that happened in the same period included correctional officers instructing child detainees to either fight or eat bird faeces for a small reward. The officers would record it on their phones and distribute 81

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it via social media, then recompense the ‘winner’ with additional rationed soft drink or chocolates (James 2015). In another case, corrections officers used multiple canisters of tear gas on incarcerated youths while in their cells, hooded them shortly thereafter, and transferred them to an adult prison facility. Further reports included that youth were often kept in solitary confinement for up to 22 hours and lacked drinking water for durations over 72 hours (Gregory and Wild 2015). In Bedburner, the interplay of power enacted on Aboriginal people, juvenile men in these instances, is communicated through the man-in-shark-jaws configuration. Again, this design is based on the biblical Jonah and the Whale allegory depiction.

Figure 32 Ryan Presley Bedburner 2014, digital print textile, final install at Cairns Regional Gallery. Photographer: Mick Richards.

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3.4.2 dominium dominium (2015, figure 33) is a two-plate etching that I undertook and completed as part of a residency in Sydney with Cicada Press. The title refers to the Roman law of absolute ownership. The etching is made up of a central burning and falling figure, presumably male, surrounded by a ring of tasers, which are in different states of falling. None of their shooting- charges face towards the man. In the bottom right corner there is a short Arabic phrase with some additional diamond, crown, and star ornamentation. In the top right corner are two severed pig heads. The background pattern is made up of vertical and horizontal black lines with orange and yellow triangular shapes among them.

The process involved in illustrating the background of the image was unexpectedly the most time consuming of the image construction process. The vertical and triangular patterns are based on the continual repetition of the Union Jack, the emblem of the British flag and a major compositional segment of the Australian national flag. The aquatinting process utilised involved repetitive intricate mark making that was necessary in order to allow for the aquatint medium to grab to the metal plate and visually create ink-able (in this case black, yellow, and orange) sections in the image. I was able to apply this process so that it also resembled the patchwork evident in a woven fabric, such as those used for national flags. By using this symbology, I sought to convey meaning by hijacking the shared public language of recognisable and shared external entities (Chomsky 1993).

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Figure 33 Ryan Presley dominium 2015. Photographer: Carl Warner.

Oppressed populations are often afflicted with poorer physical and mental health than those who are not oppressed. Instances of ‘spirit possession’ seem to be often connected with economic, sexual, or colonial oppression. This domination contributes to times when people feel controlled by an alien power that they cannot resist, and spirit possession seems to be a behavioural expression linked to these circumstances (Lewis 1971). Jesus Christ was born and raised in such an environment. He was alive during a tumultuous time in Roman-occupied Levant, or Roman Palestine, where several revolts had been ruthlessly quashed. Heavy taxes were put into place by Roman authorities, and regular failure to pay these taxes by the peasantry led to the Roman powers seizing their land. In turn, the Roman aristocracy enjoyed a huge swell in their estates. People were often heavily in debt, desperate for loans, and generally dispossessed (Armstrong 2014). This distress was a physical and mental burden to the population, and Jesus’s message and actions against imperial rule found an enthusiastic audience.

Jesus and his disciples had a renowned talent for casting out these ‘demons’. In one biblical recount, a man’s satanic possessor told Jesus their name was ‘legion’ and that ‘they were many’ (Mark 5:9), identifying themselves with the troops who were the most palpable symbols

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of the Roman occupation. Jesus did what a great deal of colonised people would like to do: he accepted the demons’ wish to take their form in pigs and proceeded to cast ‘legion’ into a herd of swine. The pigs, which were often colloquially regarded as the most polluted animals, then rushed down a steep bank into a lake and drowned (Mark 5:11–13). The ruling class seemed to have regarded Jesus’s exorcisms as political provocation. These ‘exorcism’ performances were a leading reason that Roman authorities decided to take action against Jesus (Crossan 1994; Armstrong 2014).

In a school of psychological theory called transactional analysis, ‘negative voices’ inside the head of any one individual were said to have come from one part of the ego called the ‘Pig Parent’ (Berne 1972; Steiner 1974). This repository of negative directions and labelling stem from the parents’ greater familial line, surround organisations and culture (Erskine 2010). This field of theory also defines ‘script behaviour’, decisions that an individual often makes at a young age that shape how the ‘script’ of their life will play out until their death (Steiner 1974; Napper 2010).

Commonly, this section of the ego state will transmit damaging messages of self-hatred, bigotry, racism within the individual. These are simplified as variations of the following positions: ‘You are not okay’, ‘They are not okay’, ‘You are not worthwhile’, ‘They are not worthwhile’, and ‘We are not worthwhile’ (Steiner 1974; Erskine 2010). In a latter text Steiner details this mental process in any one person as an endeavour, “to adapt to these powerful messages, and incorporate information and examples from his or her environment.” He continues to elaborate how a child may synthesise and develop, “a personal, idiosyncratic narrative that, from then on, powerfully influences his or her life” (2010, 209).

For example, regular perpetrators of violence may be influenced by such ‘voices’. At some point in their life, they may have decided that inflicting violence on others is a way of mediating the effect from themselves. People who become the victim of such acts and traumatic periods often have these script decisions and ‘voicing’ that are opposite or complementary. If they are complementary in this example, they may have a greater likelihood of become the victim of such aggression (for example, ‘He/She is not worthwhile’ coupled with ‘I am not worthwhile’). The social transaction is enacted and the pre-decided psychic equilibrium is maintained. These concepts influenced my inclusion of the pig heads in the etched image.

The central figure in dominium is a development of the burning man in the Bedburner work. In both works, I sought to experiment with visual representations of inner turmoil and psychosis. This is because I was interested in the effects that acts of brutality may have on the aggressor. 85

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In Australia, the political and social climate of the nation has never allowed for the successful prosecution of a police officer who has been documented committing violent acts as those described in this exegesis. One begins to wonder that surely there must be some internal detriment felt by these men (and in less instances, women). Dominium law arose in Rome at a time when their society was deciding the full legal status of a ‘slave’. The slave was overall classed as a living non-entity whom the owner could exploit, take pleasure from, profit therefrom, and dispose of as they saw fit. Property law was constructed from this scenario and followed suit (Armstrong 2014). Such cultural approaches, which set out human relations in these ways, are surely of a damaged and unhealthy custom. Unfortunately, due to the prevalence of Roman law, language, and religion in Western imperial society, legacies such as these continue to reverberate.

As part of this studio research, I chose to experiment with different language forms and representation. Like music, language is an organised structure of sounds and symbols that is recognised by a set of people and that can hold the speaking population’s desired world-view (Boroditsky 2011). In contrast to English lettering, Arabic and Farsi script is read from right to left and image progression is also interpreted in this differing linear approach. I worked to translate the phonetics of the Aboriginal Marri Ngarr word for ‘feral pig’, a-kanitjukyen (in English lettering), into Arabic calligraphic representation. This calligraphy was ornamented with symbols of Australian police hierarchy.

3.4.3 1675kmph towards the ends of the earth (Might or right, heavy or light)

1675kmph towards the ends of the earth (Might or right, heavy or light) (2015, figure 35) continues this experimentation with language forms. As part of my candidature, I had the opportunity to travel to Shandong province, China in 2015. This travel was part of a research exchange agreement between Queensland College of Art and Shandong University of Arts. While the original purpose of my studio-led research was not entirely fruitful, during my time there, I was able to get a greater understanding of the lived experience in the bustling city of Jinan. I was very interested in visiting a country where over time those in power have boasted on achieving revolutionary government and alleged that it has maintained such a government indefinitely (Arendt 1963).

The city itself is surrounded by small mountains that help to create a unique or more intense weather pattern within the city zones than other areas; the heat at the time of my trip was intense. Jinan is colloquially known in China for its multitude of natural springs and mountain ranges. Not far from Jinan, within the same province, is Mt. Tai. It is regarded as one of the 86

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most sacred mountains in China. Pilgrimage up this mountain was of particular relevance to the Lesser Gods research. Pilgrims would customarily make their way up during the night, climbing many kilometres of twisting and uneven stone steps to reach the summit and then witness the sunrise across the landscape.

Chinese emperors were often ardent undertakers of these pilgrimages. During imperial China, over seventy different emperors would make yearly journeys up the mountain. They would do this during every year of their reign. Imperial pilgrimages were often marked with passage memorial inscriptions that are still visible to tourists and local visitors today (figure 34). Importantly, while at the summit, they would decide the actions they would take in governing their realm within the coming year. I made a concerted effort to get to Mt. Tai during my time in Shandong and I was successful in climbing to the summit of the mountain and viewing these markers.

Figure 34 Imperial inscriptions on ascent of Mt. Tai or Taishan. Photographer: Ryan Presley

What is particularly striking is the similarity to the prophet-and-mountain dynamic that is evident in other religious traditions. In the Christian tradition it is chronicled in the Transfiguration event with Jesus and his disciples atop Mt. Tabor (Luke 9:28–36) and with Moses and the legendary episode at Mt. Sinai (Exodus 19:7–25). Since antiquity. ‘the mountain’ has often been the axis between an imagined heaven and earth. It has stood as a 87

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marker for a communication point with the ‘heavens’ and is often framed as a central locus point within an imagined ‘country’. Hence, it is in the middle or at the ‘centre of the world’ (Eliade 1968). Due to China’s imperial history, it is perhaps not any coincidence that the Mandarin term for China is Zhongguo (中國/中国), which is translated as ‘middle kingdom’ or more commonly in current times as ‘central state’.

Over centuries, the ritual of traversing a mountaintop is to navigate to the axis point and the access point between heaven and earth. In doing so, an individual may enact themself as a messenger or literal mediator between heaven and earth. The act, which allows for the inducing of authority belonging to a god, seems a psychological trope common to various human societies. It is a physical enactment of a ruler invoking a sacred authority, often through a remote god in order to enact their will on a larger populace (Belting 1994). Shandong province is also the birthplace of Chinese philosopher Confucius.

Confucian ideals and philosophies emphasise a peaceful yielding of people to each other, especially their respective families, within society. However, he explicitly recognised that this was not always possible and that warfare was inevitable and admittedly necessary behaviour for the maintenance of an imperial nation-state (Armstrong 2014). Ideally, he saw that each person was at the centre of a growing set of concentric circles. Each ring represents an echelon of the world that the person must relate to—from family to class to race to state and so on, until its scope includes the entire world. He supposed that the lessons learnt in caring and sympathy from the inner realms of the circle would be able to eventually be applied to the outer bands (Wei-Ming 1985). The analogy and its use of concentric circles echoes the stoic philosopher Hierocles who considered individuals as consisting of a similar series. The first circle is the human mind, next comes the immediate family, followed by the extended family, and then the local community. After which are the communities of neighbouring towns, followed by your country, and finally the entire human race. He reasoned that it was desirable to draw the circles in towards the centre, transferring people to the inner circles, making all human beings a part of an individuals concern (in Ramelli and Konstan 2009).

Western thought commonly defines contemporary cosmopolitanism in terms of an individuals’ loyalty to the worldwide human community, a moral universalism (Delanty 2009). Marta Nussbaum cites Hierocles’s analogy and adds that our task as citizens of the world will be to, “draw circles somehow toward the centre” (1996, 9). The ‘how’ of this goal proves to be tenuous in our globalised world. Especially when the legacy of Western supremacy is

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considered and its wholehearted role in contemporary globalisation and enforced assimilation practices are acknowledged.

Figure 35 Ryan Presley 1675kmph towards the ends of the earth (Might or right, heavy or light) 2015. Photographer: Carl Warner.

1675kmph towards the ends of the earth (Might or right, heavy or light) is a woodcut print. Its focal point is a large goanna clinging to a set of concentric circles that are in various positions of rotation. Three of the bands contain Mandarin text. One contains stylised depictions of mountain ranges and bodies of water. These two differing forms are broken up by four equally spaced hands that are emerging from clouds. The inner and outer bands of the concentric circle are blank. At odds with the goanna are a multitude of cane toads in various states of plummeting descent. Behind them, a satellite hovers in the top right corner. The background is made up by a chorus of addition symbols that towards the bottom of the image begin to change to subtraction symbols.

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The encircled Chinese characters depict quotations from two eminent figures in Chinese history. On the inner two circles are repeats of Sima Qian, on the outer is Mao Zedong. Each of them is referring to Mt. Tai in the quotes and are poetically invoking its power. Sima Qian’s quote translates to “Though death befalls all men alike, its significance may be heavy as Mount Tai or light as a feather.” In some variations, ‘feather’ is translated as ‘swan’s down’. In the outer rings, Mao Zedong riffs on this phrase by stating, “To die for the people is weightier than Mount Tai, but to work for the fascists and die for the exploiters and oppressors is lighter than a feather.” This quote is taken from a speech he gave in 1944 that was part of his well-known ‘Serve the People’ initiative (Wagner 1992).

In this work, I was contemplating the lives of these two historical figures and the public adoration of Mao in China, or at least Jinan, where I was living for two months. Depictions of Mao are prominent throughout the public space and his portrait features on nearly every Chinese banknote. Themes of revolution, power, and reflection that were important factors in these prominent people’s lives were critical points that influenced the production of this image. Roles and decisions that people, as a general populous, make in their lives was also of particular interest. Eric Berne, who established psychological theory on the nature of human destiny, has detailed the transmission of ‘culture’ from one generation to another (figure 36).

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Image removed due to copyright.

Figure 36 “Cultural Transmission” from Eric Berne, What Do You Say after You Say Hello? The Psychology of Human Destiny (1972). Berne uses a Papua New Guinean ‘medicine man’ archetype for his explanatory example. In the family, the father is instructed to become a successful ‘medicine man’ within the community; the wife, who becomes the mother of the next generation, is similarly scripted in order to raise a second ‘good medicine man’. If there is a daughter, then she may also be scripted in future to become a mother of a ‘good medicine man’. In this scenario, the son of each generation fulfils his role. This station may have some variations as society and influence change, such as the son in #2 who may instead attend medical school in Fiji and become a Medical Assistant there. Due to further changes, his son may then attend medical school in London. The underlying transmission (be a ‘knowledgeable healer’ or ‘raise a knowledgeable healer’), however, remains the same. This diagram efficiently demonstrates the programming of ‘culture’ over one hundred years. Similar diagrams could be drawn for any element of ‘culture’ or any ‘role’ in a community (Berne 1972).

There may be problems here with using the anthropological go-to or cliché of the Papua New Guinean tribesman, as well as the possible ‘progress’ reading that is arguable over the

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designated generations. However, I believe that there is much truth and constructive knowledge available in this demonstration of familial and cultural transference. The information conveyed is also effective through this ‘medicine man’ example as it indicates how marked social change will have little variance on overall script drive.

Earlier in his text, Berne details positive (+ symbols) as healthy psychological outlooks, and negative (- symbols) and unhealthy outlooks and attitudes. Often, they will encompass two or three positions, ‘I’ and ‘You’ and sometimes ‘Them’. These positions were demonstrated earlier in the dominium text. Different societies and cultures will have different configurations of these three positions in relation to different practices and ideals. For example, often a tourist from an international destination will have what they regard as a more fulfilling experience in a community that shares their same or similar psychological outlook positions (Napper 2010). As well as script theory, the patterned uniform garb of saints within iconography was a major influence to the conception of the work and pattern design.

The title of the work references the speed at which the earth spins on its axis through space (deGrasse Tyson et al 2014). It is an astonishing speed though thoroughly imperceptible due to the laws of physics such as gravity, which serve to stabilise our experience. In his letters, Galileo stated that he believed there was room for science and religion, positing that the Bible explained how to get to heaven but not how heaven worked. Unfortunately, even the claim that a natural order reflects the exigency of a Divine Will could be cut two ways. On one end, it allows for a rational approach to nature; on the other, there are arguments for the possibility in understanding to be dismissed (Brooke 1991). Regrettably, there are elements of contention on these issues today. Arguments over creationism, literal biblical interpretation and evolution remain rapaciously in the public forum. I believe that the reverberation of these arguments (as are evident in current Western society) illustrate the power of fear, intelligence, and taught ideas that are passed on as part of dynastic transference.

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Figure 37 Ryan Presley Warheads 2015. Photographer: Carl Warner. 3.4.4 Warheads

Warheads (2015, figure 37) is a linocut print on paper that depicts three life-size saltwater crocodile skulls stacked vertically. Their mouths are open and coins flow freely from within their jaws. Each skull has a slightly different algebraic formula painted on its snout. Read from top to bottom, the formulas portray X + X, X – X, and X = X. Read in this sequence, they are a reference to Berne’s ‘mentality of futility’ hypothesis. It is the pessimistic position of cynics

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or (perhaps and) those who believe in predestination and original sin. Those who believe no one is any good, of any worth, anywhere: that, overall, life is futile (Berne 1972).

The skulls also have additional figures and markings unique to each of them. The top skull has CSG fracking equipment dotted along its top jaw. CSG pipelines constrict sections of the bottom jaw. Two beautiful, affluent people relax beneath a parasol at the tip of the skulls bottom jaw. The middle skull shows a decrepit, ringing church bell on the top end of its snout. Towards the back of its head launches a nuclear missile with an inscription of ‘JXIII8’ on the outer shell. This inscription, which is in place of a serial number or military design, is a reference to a quote from the King James Bible. It summons Job 13:8: “Will ye accept his person – will ye contend for God?”

On the skull’s bottom jaw are seven visible tank track markings. The bottom skull is surveyed by a Predator drone, elevating itself at the back of the crocodile’s head. The drones shadow begins to creep over the skull’s surface. On the bottom jaw, there are horse hoof tracks that vary in distance in different areas of the jaw, showing that the horse was in different states of gait. Each skull has coins hovering in both eye sockets. The coins that flow from their mouths only reveal the profile of a sovereign’s head, no other variation of the minted imagery.

This work was made in partial reference to the St George allegory. I used crocodile skulls in this composition because crocodiles are creatures that actually exist in reality but are easily comparable to that of a ‘dragon’. The skull in Christian art is inseparable from concerns of death (Sill 1975; Hall 2008). Thus, to have the dragon’s heads represented as dead leads to the idea of the ‘dragon’ as a benign threat. Instead of fiery or toxic breath, coins are flowing freely from its mouth. Its being is occupied, used as the foundation for church and religious structures and as a launchpad for nuclear missiles. Moreover, this work experiments with the allegories ‘position roles’—be they rescuer, persecutor, or victim—that psychology theorist Steven Karpman has developed. Karpman created a visual diagram that represented these roles in what he dubbed the ‘Drama Triangle’ (figure 38). Warrior saint allegories such as St George and St Theodore are able to be veritably applied to this matrix; for example, St George as the rescuer, the dragon as the persecutor, and the townspeople as the victim. These roles are often subject to being reversed and switched, as in St George’s example where his threats to the townspeople of mandatory conversion see him switch from rescuer to persecutor. Karpman recognises the presence of the Drama Triangle within such fantasies and myths. He conveys that fables help inculcate the norms of society into young minds. They may provide an attractive and stereotyped number of roles, locations, and timetables (Karpman 1968).

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Image removed due to copyright concerns.

Figure 38 Steven Karpman’s Drama Triangle, from Fairy Tales and Script Drama Analysis (1968).

He outlines that someone ‘living in a fairy tale’ often has a simplified view of the world and will position people in their life into key roles. Moreover, the drama allows all persons who are involved to have some kind of recognised social role. Culturally diverse individuals are increasingly likely to assume less ‘attractive’ and disempowered roles within the fantasy (Karpman 1968). David Coote elaborates on these disempowered roles and theorises on their implementation as contribution to the creation of a ‘caste’ system within different societies. Society may have three discrete classes (stymied-persecutor, potential victim, and rescuer), which are largely psychologically segregated. They serve to maintain a dramatically based caste system that enables the established class roles. The process provides social standing for some but at the expense of others. It seems that the psychological (e.g. scripted and stereotyped) segregation enabled by the caste system is necessary to ensure that the disvalued qualities remain with one class: the stymied-persecutors (2009). In Australia, it appears that Aboriginal people have been allocated this position in the lower caste or, as referred to earlier, lowest rung. Invocations of Aboriginal people as the ‘stymied-persecutor’

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or ‘dragon’ are evident in the public façade of the NT Intervention. In this case, it was post- pubescent Aboriginal men.

3.4.5 Crown Land (to the ends of the earth)

Crown Land (to the ends of the earth) (2016, figure 39) is another key work that seeks to reimagine the St George myth. The central figure in the place of St George is a young Aboriginal woman. Her image was studio modelled by a friend of mine, who, like myself, is from the Northern Territory. She was born in Maningrida and much of her family reside in this area, which is still afflicted by Intervention policies. She sits defiantly upon a rearing horse, with her right arm raised, wielding a sizeable machete in her right hand.

Figure 39 Ryan Presley Crown Land (to the ends of the earth) 2016

She opposes a grotesque dragon. The creature was amalgamated as a composite of several different animals: a snake to form the bulk of the heads and the tail, a lion for the tail end, a tiger for the grasping arms, a goat for the horns and facial scruff, an eagle for the wings, and a crocodile for the underbelly. Its arms are grasping for a crown that it was interrupted in consigning upright on the ground. The crown lies on its side and is mounted with an elongated 96

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and bejewelled crucifix. On the left side of the crucifix is a well-mount wheel device. One of the dragons has its mouth agape and is blowing a flame from its well head–type tongue. The flame has a dollar sign resemblance within its form. The dragon’s claws on its hind legs push into the ground.

Since antiquity, the presence of stymied-persecutor has occurred a multitude of times in myth- making, often in the form of dragons, serpents, or monstrous apparitions, and occasionally as women and men. They represent an aura of evil and consequently need to be vanquished, especially by deeds of a strong, male hero. This interplay is evident in the stories of Gilgamesh versus Humbaba in Mesopotamian tradition, Rē and the dragon Apopsis in Egyptian tradition, Thraetaona versus the Three-headed dragon in ancient Iranian tradition, Trito and the Three- headed serpent of Aryan tradition, Solomon versus Obyzouth in the biblical tradition, and Saints George, Theodore and Demetrius as examples of the dynamic in Christian tradition (Eliade 1968; Walter 2003; Armstrong 2014). Each of these societies is similar to the contemporary West in that they maintained warfare as an economic mode and were patriarchal in their social models. Contemporary Western warfare tradition is often enacted through sky-based strategy, such as the ‘shock and awe’ air raid bombings in the 2003 Iraq invasion or the current prolific use of Drone-based offensives in Afghanistan.

Eugene Trubetskoi details the Novgorod icon school’s practice of depicting both St George and Elijah’s Fiery Ascent. He describes these depictions as ‘thunder images’. Elijah is of eternal motionless calm among a red, stormy sky (figure 40). But at the same time, he sends down ‘God’s blessing or wrath’ from an infinitely remote celestial region. He remarks on George’s billowing and fiery red cape, his dazzling white steed, and thrusting spear as he slays the dragon. Concluding, he says, “All make him a vivid image of God’s storm and coruscating lightning” (1973, 44). The circular red sky used in the depiction in icons of Elijah was an influence on the Crown Land composition. The communication of power and the reworking and subversion of its position was an important part in the depiction of the dragon, rider and circular sky theme.

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Figure 40 Unknown artist The Fiery Ascent of Prophet Elijah Novgorod School, 15th century (both)

The intended impression of the horsewoman is calm and confident. My aim was to follow Orthodox priest and theological professor Gennadios Limouris’s definition of the icon as a presentation of personal presence. He interprets that an icon points to humanity’s true face, its face for eternity. The icon simply has to resemble the model; it cannot dispense with resemblance. While rejecting the subjective impression of the model, however, the icon does not impress photographic objectivity. Its pledge is “to communicate with the macrocosm and, finally, communion” (1990, 103). From this perspective, I believe my work appropriately presents the model—it distinctly resembles her appearance but can also be applied to the larger community of women negatively affected by the policies and actions of the NT Emergency intervention.

The landscape is formed by a simple, repeating wave pattern, flattened red soil. Small bushels of grasses are patched sporadically in this area. At the sides of the image stands a total of three sand palms. These trees are native to the top end of the Northern Territory. New leaves of the palm are used primarily by women in the area as a weaving medium to make fibrecrafts. The plant also produces a cabbage that can be eaten (Marri Ngarr and Magati Ke). One of the palms has no leaves, a sign it has been harvested and is therefore symbolic of human occupation.

The palm has a colourful history within the canon of Christian imagery. It has, at differing times, been used as a symbol of military triumph and victory, Mary’s triumph over sin and death, 98

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Christian victory over death, and an identifying attribute of a Christian martyr. As it is an evergreen plant, it is also a reminder of supposed immortality (Hall 2008; Sill 1975). In political defiance of the Romans who had used the palm as a symbol for their victory over the Israelites, people spread palm leaves across Jesus’s path for him to walk upon as he entered Jerusalem (John 12:13).

The mountains in the work create a semicircle arc that almost cradles the concentric circle formation. The mountain features are a similar stylisation as those featured in the icon renditions of the Lesser Gods video. Small tufts of grass appear on each mountain. Nestled beyond the left mountains peak is a collection of skyscraper buildings. These take the place of the Libyan townspeople and monarchy in Silene, figures who are often depicted in icon renditions as being at a distance and helplessly looking on. These buildings however were modelled off mining and banking headquarters in Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne, and Perth. Above the right mountain sits the World Trade Center undergoing its 2001 terrorist destruction event.

Recent talks between the Australian government and the US have proposed the cycling of B- 1 bomber Jets through already established US military garrison installations in the top end Northern Territory. The use of B-52 bombers is already prevalent but the B-1 bombers are nuclear capable and have more advanced technology. Long-range proficient B1-B bombers may also be used. It is feared that the use of these jets will flare tensions in the region with China over the resource-rich South China Seas (Henderson and Greene 2016). These specific B-1 planes are flying out over the foreground of the smoke of the burning World Trade Center.

The concentric circle motif is similar the the one featured in 1675kmph towards the ends of the earth (Might or right, heavy or light). In this version, Arabic script is visible instead of Chinese characters. The outer band translates to the aforementioned Malcolm X quote, “Revolution is based on land. Land is the basis for all independence. Land is the basis for all freedom, justice, and equality.” The inner two bands contain the repeating phrase, “with golden soil and wealth for toil”. The four hands that reach through the clouds are reminiscent of God’s permission that is usually represented in icon renditions. Instead, in this work, three of them have their palms out, open, while the fourth is shown horizontal with its palm down. The placement of these hands is a reference to the work of John Curwen, who was an English Congregationalist minister and was responsible for developing the initial representation of Solfège (do-re-mi-fa-sol-la-ti-do) into distinct hand signs (Curwen 1901). The notes depicted by the four hands in Crown Land are sol-sol-sol-mi, and they are representative of the melodic intervals that accompany the lyrics ‘with wealth for toil’ in the Australian national anthem. This 99

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was another avenue of my experimentation in representing sound visually or encoding it within visual image.

3.4.6 Themesong

Figure 41 Ryan Presley Themesong 2016 (select images). Photographer: Carl Warner.

Themesong (2016, figure 41) is a series that is based on the Cymatic sequencing of the Lesser Gods animated film. The work is composed of twelve separate square panels that are made from a native Australian Hoop pine ply. I used this material because pine is the most commonly used wood in the construction of icon works. The back of the blocks were constructed in an imitation of old icon assembly and backing. Two thin rectangular spacers were applied to the back of the block as part of this imitation (Stuart 1975; Temple 2004). This feature also allows the blocks to appear as if they are levitating slightly off the surface of the wall.

The work is arranged into two rows. Both rows are able to be from read left to right. The top row has a specific title as Themesong (For we are young and free) and the bottom row has the title of Themesong (Our home is girt by sea). The ‘For we are young and free’ sections contains images of a ringing bell, an astronaut adrift, three falling crowns, a maggot-filled skull beneath two Ulysses butterflies, a crouched scorpion and Green Tree Frog, and purple Anemone flower sprouting among vines of razor-wire. The ‘Our home is girt by sea’ shows three launching nuclear warheads, a mining haul truck, a shaped honeycomb surrounded by twelve flies, three leg traps in differing states of activation, a flapping dove carrying a eucalypt branch, and a junk ship exploding in flame.

The Cymatic symbols featured are a blend of the Chladni patterns and patterns that were formed in my own experiments. I then duplicated and mirrored these shapes and stylised them to my own ends, ascribing them a musical note for the purposes of this work. As the title suggests, the series is based once more on melodies contained within the national anthem

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and the works are arranged as simple ascending and descending patterns within the fifth and fourth octave in a C Major scale. This work was conceived as a play on reverence and sought to depict contradictory elements that come into play when domination is an overarching ideal.

The colour palette of the background Cymatic patterns is made up of an alternating white, red, purple, and black set of combinations. The usage of these colours was another synthesis of the classic icon colour palette. As an example, purple and blue hues were often available in Russian icon painting school, and added an increasing value to a colour that was also associated with the depiction of royalty and truth (Drobot 1990; Sill 1975). All of the twelve paintings feature gilding as a major part of their composition. In terms of ratio, half the image is 22 karat gilded gold leaf.

Trubetskoi argues that because gold is not found in the spectrum, it is conceptually not part of creation. Therefore, it occupies a central position in the ‘musical’ colour scale. He considers that all the other colours are subordinate to gold, “rather in the same way that the polyphonic choir of suffocating figures on the deisis is related to Christ” (1973, 49). He continues, claiming that gold is sourced from God himself. So I thought it would be an interesting approach to experiment with the blend of gold and synthetic polymer paint in producing these images. They were designed and created with reference to human habits of seeking Godly authorities to esteem different echelons of society with different ascribed values.

The repetitive and complex nature of the process of gilding and painting this work came to represent a real ‘toiling’ to achieve its creation. I was interested in the concept that colours and shapes could express a metaphysical world-view; that, above all, icons are a medium for the expression of ideas (Stuart 1975). By blending them with a musical encoding, I sought to add an extra dimension to the reading and attribute them with the ‘language of the mighty’, a siren of the dominant culture (Attali 1985). In terms of language, John Stuart’s aforementioned statement on the similar principle evident in designs of the icon as akin to the technique of forming letters. The work was conceived as a ‘speaking in tongues’ that speaks in the language of the ‘mighty’. A language for those for those who will read them. In Themesong toyed with these ideas, attempting both ambiguity and a more singular meaning.

Images may contain a range of meanings of which the spectator is not fully conscious. This is especially the case with the icon, which generally deals in simple terms about things which are complex (Stuart 1975; Temple 1990; Barasch 1992). The high usage of symbolism within icons and the general Christian image tradition were of particular importance and sought to

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be recreated in this Themesong series, especially in regards to the canon of symbolism, where sometimes a single symbol has the power to suggest several ideas simultaneously.

In The Plague, which some argue is a seminal tome on the nature of destiny, Albert Camus reasoned: The evil that is in the world always comes of ignorance, and good intentions may do as much harm as malevolence, if they lack understanding. On the whole men are more good than bad. That, however isn't the real point; but they are more less ignorant and it is this that we call vice or virtue; the most incorrigible vice being that of an ignorance that fancies it knows everything and therefore claims for itself the right to kill. The soul of the murderer is blind and there can be no true goodness; nor true love without the utmost clear sightedness. (1960, 120–21)

In harmony with this view, psychological theorist Albert Ellis notated a list of eleven irrational beliefs prevalent within Western society. Significantly, one of the beliefs was that certain people or peoples were evil and villainous; because of this intrinsic nature, they should be severely blamed and punished. He contended that in reality most acts and behaviours that were considered evil and immoral were based on stupidity, ignorance, and emotional disturbance (in Bernard 2010).

Ellis had traced this view of the ‘evil’ back to Medieval Christian theology. These religious concepts of ‘sin’ and ‘free will’ still pervade our language and preconceptions today even though there is the assumption that we live in a more secular and scientific era, thus rendering this history immaterial (Robertson 2010). I believe that the historical legacy is still tangible within our current Australian society. Coding Themesong and the greater body of Lesser Gods works with signs and symbols of this religious history and colonial culture was part of a greater effort to reflect the dominant paradigm and to highlight the need for justice and the ability for change. The coding also allowed for a continued application of pattern, in a way that could distort the representational plane and highlight other important aspects of the image.

3.5 Allied Contemporary Practitioners

Due to the fact that the primary body of this research has been conducted as a historical analysis, contemporary art practitioners have only played a minor role. Items such as flags, money, and religious paraphernalia have served as a more salient vehicle for visual expression within the body of work during this candidature. Moreover, I do recognise that there 102

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are other artists who are working with a range of similar issues and concepts that help to contextualise the Lesser Gods work within the greater context of contemporary output.

Artists I believe that help underpin this research analysis include Archie Moore for his sculpted Bible works. They include his On a Mission from God, Maltheism and Sacred Sites series (2008, figure 42). Moore then uses paper-cut techniques to shape the pages of Bibles into miniature churches that are based on missionary built churches.

Image removed due to copyright.

Figure 42 Archie Moore, Sacred Sites (the first intervention) 2008

Renee Cox presents a potent model for undercutting racial stereotypes through the critical reconfiguration of religious and popular images. In her photographic work Yo Mama’s Last Supper (1996, figure 43), she repositions herself as the focal protagonist. In doing so, she replaces the male Jesus Christ. It appears as if she has shot the panoramic image within the same room with slightly different arrangement of the same props and differing models.

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Image removed due to copyright.

Figure 43 Renee Cox Yo Mama’s Last Supper 1996

The cross-media work of Yinka Shonibare offers particular insights into the complex relations between trade and the construction of ‘authentic’ African identity. His work Last Supper (2013, figure 44) features another interpretation on Da Vinci’s Last Supper painting. In this work, however, the scene is made three-dimensional and has an overtly hedonistic quality, with a large feast laid out upon the table and the figures gesturing expressively and in colourful garb. The figures are left headless and gloved and so any definitive identity is unable to be comprehended.

Image removed due to copyright.

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Figure 44 Yinka Shonibare, Last Supper (after Leonardo) 2013

Paul Pfeiffer reconstructs basketball imagery to give it religious overtones and references spectacle and consumption, as seen in the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse series (figures 45 and 46). The men appear to levitate and show dramatic attempts for some communion with the sky. The use of photo editing to remove the basketball and re-contextualise the image is done to great effect. The large passive audience appears enthralled in the excitement.

Images removed due to copyright.

Figure 45 Paul Pfeiffer The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (6) 2001 (Left)

Figure 46 Paul Pfeiffer The Four Horseman of the Apocalypse (8) 2001 (Right)

Another artist of interest is Richard Hamilton, specifically his the citizen work (1983, figure 47). This uses Christian image traditions such as the diptych and refers to the political struggles of IRA members in British prisons. Such a person is painted on the right of the diptych in a somewhat of a Christ-reminiscent portrayal. His cell is a mess of foam and bed sheets. The left part of the work shows the figure’s faeces smeared across the wall. This was a common act performed by IRA prisoners who wished to protest against their incarceration. The left panel and its usage of abstract patternation allows the viewer a space for contemplation.

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Image removed due to copyright.

Figure 47 Richard Hamilton the citizen 1983

In terms of contemporary icon painters in Australia, Leonard Brown is one of the few practitioners. After living as a priest, he continues to be privately commissioned by churches to recreate icon works. Sometimes these works are exhibited at the Andrew Baker Gallery in Brisbane as part of the contemporary sphere. There is little to no political content within these works, but they are evidence of continued production within this time.

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Image removed due to copyright.

Figure 48 Leonard Brown The three holy hierarchs 2008

Justin O’Brian’s work serves as an example of another Australian painter who incorporates religious and iconic styles into his images. His work is of some interest as it does blend the icon’s use of gold leaf with a slightly higher level of realism in depiction of figurative elements. This has some similarity in expression as my Crown Land work. However, his work seems to bear no overt political content and his expression is somewhat conservative.

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Image removed due to copyright.

Figure 49 Justin O’Brien The Miraculous Draught of Fishes no 2 ca.1978

Throughout the chapter, there has been a demonstration of the work that was produced over the candidature and the important processes and mediums that were involved in their creation. The first section of this chapter was particularly devoted to the process and incorporation of new methodology. The following sections detailed workings that elaborated on the experimental foundations and emphasised the continuing linkage between the mediums used and the conceptual intent of the images created.

Overall, Chapter 3 has reiterated the important global histories, included psychological theory, and presented personal experiences that have shaped the studio production. I believe that Western culture is a synthesis of varying traditions from Europe and its neighbours, a large part of which still exists in the ritual practice of Christianity. In the Lesser Gods artwork, I have worked to mimic this lush synthesis. In Australia, I have been witness to this intersection of cultural practice as part of a mixed race family with varying backgrounds. As in several communities, the baptismal waters of the Catholic Church that I attended as a youth had taken up residence and enacted their mission against the backdrop of the desert centre, Aboriginal communities, international immigrants, and the colonial frontier.

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Different rituals and symbolisms were elaborated upon within the latter body of work. Flags, uniformity, and repetition were key themes within the chapter. They stood as signifiers for the recurrence of behavioural patterns, thoughts, and fears. The usage of these symbols in tandem with the iconic styling has been done in a critical way, as a mirror and retort against colonial ideals and ‘might is right’ actions. Conclusion:

This research has explored the links between religion, economics, and conquest in colonial and postcolonial societies, and their effects on Aboriginal people living in Australia today. Chapters 1 and 2 set up the historical framework of this research, while Chapter 3 discussed my visual artworks that respond to the themes and concepts that were evoked as well as interweaving contemporary examples of the aftermath of colonisation. As I have shown, events such as the Crusades and the honing of the British East India Company were critical in shaping the culture that desired to occupy and create colonial Australia. They were not the sole factors, of course, but within the realms of religious practice, economics, and domination, these were watershed moments for the interweaving of Western European, and now ‘global’, cultural practices into Australia.

The invasion of Iraq and continued occupation of Afghanistan also speak to the infiltration and moralising aspect of ‘Western’ cultural attitudes. That is not to say that all facets of Western culture are immoral or somehow deformed. The real problem is that within a society that reveres warfare and espouses the myth of ‘liberation’, behaviours that seek to fulfil it are most likely to follow suit. As I have indicated through the example of ancient Mesopotamian society and my observations of power at work within China, this glorification of imperialism is not unique to the ‘West’. However, it is a significant problem within societies such as Australia and the US, where ideas of the ‘burden of civilisation’ are more easily resourced and enacted in physical expression.

As such, a particular focus within this research has been the theme of the warrior saint, and its continued manifestation in the twenty-first century. The important reality of the NT Emergency Response (the Intervention) or, as it was later rebranded, the ‘Stronger Futures’ policy, is a clear example of the presence of the warrior saint ethos in the current Australian social and political climate. It bears the attitudes and behaviour of historical tropes of conquest. The rollout is easily translated into a warrior saint allegory and then into a defined set of dramatic behaviours, as demonstrated in the Karpman triangle.

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Contemporary Australian culture has inherited the legacy of Imperial Rome and feudal custom. This is troubling, as is the worship of the crucified Christ and the view of his death as an exchange for sin. To put it in contemporary terms, the symbolic veneration of a torture device used by Imperial Rome to silence the political activism of a state dissident is entirely problematic. Prominent allegories such as crucifixion and their etymological and historical connections to financial stratification within communal hierarchies also feed the language of the ‘conqueror’. In transactional analytic terminology, the ‘conqueror’ becomes synonymous with the ‘peace-keeper’ or ‘rescuer’.

Recognising the Crusades as the birth of modern colonialism acknowledges a 1000-year heritage of social conditioning: an aged tradition that has encouraged actions to seek foreign dominance, religious righteousness, and market values. The funneling of this custom through subsequent generations has undeniably established a negative cultural framework that is hefty to comprehend and overcome. I sought to produce studio work that was both an admonition and a play of the dominant cultural agenda. The manipulation of intention, objective, and power were key interests in the research, and I sought to express them visually through the Lesser Gods and After Lesser Gods works. For example, the video’s dictation of participants’ actions on the dance floor was an important realisation of this usage of political manipulation.

The Lesser Gods installation was an elaboration of the choice that individuals make to uphold the cultural legacy of warfare and domination (even through ignorance). By choosing to enter the ‘jaws of hell’, people chose to be a passive ‘audience’ to the violence onscreen, and/or people chose to be ‘active’ within the permitted boundaries as presented by the work. The boundaries limited their role to collusion within the ‘chorus’ part or disruption in the ‘verse’ part. My work dominium was similarly referential to the choices that people make. Whether through the infantry, police force, or institutional bureaucrat, there is a working to maintain and nurture the historical network of power.

Perhaps there is some prospect for meaningful social change in the future, but the 1000-year- old legacy of power and dominance sketched throughout this thesis shows that there are almost insurmountable cultural odds to be overcome. The transmission of ideals seems to be done so effectively and sometimes without malice—that just happens to be what people are born with and into and they make the best of the means at their reach. 1675 kmph till the ends of the earth (might or right, heavy or light) was made in light of these thoughts. It considers the power of the individual in deciding their own fate and the means by which that is or is not possible.

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Themesong serves as the conceptual endpoint to this body of research in physical form. It reiterates the construction of power and synthesises elements of iconic styles and Christian forms with references to a nationally familiar melodic refrain. I sought to create a final work that was a blend of ugliness and beauty, blends that I think are palpable in Australian society. By entwining these appearances, the work is a comment on communal and individual choice in our lifetime, in our location. I contend that no one is intrinsically evil. It seems debatable how precisely ‘good’ or ‘moral’ is socially defined, especially over the course of several generations. The scope of this research was not to presume to know these subjective matters. Rather, it was to extract key markers that continue to exact impact in our daily lives: to make some comment on the autonomy of society in terms of historical influence and personal awareness.

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Reference List:

Al-Azmeh, Aziz. 1997. Muslim Kingship: Power and the Sacred in Muslim, Christian and Pagan Polities. New York: I.B. Tauris and Co. Ltd.

Arendt, Hannah. 1963. On Revolution. Middlesex: Penguin Books.

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Appendix – Install of Themesong Exhibition

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Themesong, solo exhibition by Ryan Presley. Open 4th – 28th May, 2016. Webb Gallery, Queensland College of Art, Brisbane QLD. Photographs courtesy of Carl Warner. 132