Sixteenth International Conference on the Arts in Society

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has brought the world’s focus and dependence on money into sharp focus. It has laid bare the structural inequalities of Neoliberal Capitalism where precarious bodies, and our fundamental connection to each other, are considered expendable. The practice-led research project ‘43 Minutes’ unfolded at an experimental commercial gallery in Brisbane (Australia) when the reality of COVID-19 was taking hold. Participatory in design, it aimed to explore the major characteristics and effects of Neoliberal Capitalism. Employing signifiers of Capitalism, such as white paint and mass-produced building materials like plasterboard, ply, particleboard etc., The KACA Projects invited participants to paint a wall “1000 times” for an arbitrary 43 minutes. There are limitations to what local art projects such as this can achieve or change more broadly, however COVID-19 restrictions unquestionably opened up a space for contemplation—dedicated time to potentially conceive of an order where profits are not above people. In this “portal” moment, The KACA Projects were interested in what ‘43 Minutes’ could reveal about tacit social and economic behaviours—and the emotional mindset—of Australians. The project has yielded outcomes which are both understandable and unsettling; disheartening, yet optimistic too. Ultimately, the project revealed many hopeful moments, as well as an understanding of the group’s complicity in Neoliberal Capitalism. Sadly, however, it also revealed the futility of the project’s (perhaps naïve) intentions. Those involved were challenged to comprehend a world without Neoliberal Capitalism, particularly when Australia was beginning to return to ‘business as usual’—to the problematic ‘new normal’.