Our Daily State of Emergency (2)

Goldsmiths, BA Fine Art and History of Art Post-Degree Show, 2020.

The permanent state of fear, alertness, control and oppression has been recently branded the "new normal". The dehumanizing face masks and social distancing are the rules we are willing to accept because we believe they are rational and beneficial or simply because we must. The diagonal stripes, evoking alert, signalling both danger and safety, usually indicating some exceptional circumstances, became the pattern of the “new normal” every day. They had been used for a long time in every element of the System requiring control: its industrial, military, travel, political, and economic institutions. As argues historian Michel Pastoureau, in his book ''The Devil's Cloth: A History of Stripes and Striped Fabric'' (2001), a striped surface implies the desire to contain something ambivalent, indistinct, and uncontrollable. Stripe, he maintains, is a cultural mark and carrier of often contradictory messages. Depending on their colour, size and position stripes can be good or bad, distinguish those being controlled (prisoner’s uniforms) from those who control (pinstripes on banker’s suits, striped ties of elitarian schools and clubs). Stripes on the ground indicate both passage and the difficulty of the passage, requiring obedience and precaution.

A society subjected to fear and panic becomes irrational and readily accepts any measures that promise some safety. In such circumstances control, already essential to hold the tiling puzzle of the System together, can easily be abused. Glamorised, personalised signs of control are easier to accept, and people are adapting to oppression, which is being somehow domesticated. However, are we always aware of the amount of control, who is controlling, what and why? Are we alert to manipulation?