Constance ARI

“I am a compost-ist, not a posthuman-ist: we are all compost, not posthuman”
Donna Haraway, Anthropocene, Capitalocene, Plantationocene, Chthulucene: Making Kin

In response to the 2019 Dark Mofo premise of a forest, we sought to engage with the elemental and dynamic proposition of compost; as a process of intermingling, incessant transformation and its potential for extractive currency. We invited artists, presenters and writers who in some manner engage with a notion and physicality of grit and exchange, stemming from a desire for mess and agitation - of bodies, thinking, materials, and economy.

¢ompo$t is sited in the fecund, subterranean spaces of an empty, heritagelisted colonial building of trade and commerce in central Hobart, and whilst built as a site of profit and exchange, the building was appropriated as a blood bank for a wounded population during both world wars. The implications of the disparate forms of currency housed within the building’s architecture have become enmeshed in the matter of the building, its episodic visions of profit and care, as well as the associated rituals enacted within it.

¢ompo$t explores a notion of currency as composting - a process of comingling and circulation, of growth and decomposition, vitality, opportunism, proliferation, and transformation. ¢ompo$t becomes a metaphor for breaking down invented divisions and dichotomies to reveal the inextricably interlinked nature of energies, psychologies, ecologies and economies. Dig into the mud.

Re-distribute priorities. Microcosms are connected to macrocosms. Our economical paradigm is connected to ecological wellbeing.

In bringing this exhibition into being, we would like to thank the artists, Hayden Fowler, Caitlin Franzmann, Georgia Lucy Ingall, Loren Kronemyer and Red Slyme Incubator (Hannah Hallam-Eames and Samuel Jackson); presenters/writers Isabella Foster, Grace Gamage and Lucas Ihlein; Constance A.R.I, MONA, Dark Mofo and The Behrakis Group for the generous use of the site.

X Lucy & Nadège 

Opening Night 
6.15pm Welcome to country with Sinsa Mansell
6.30pm Georgia beach. A story pulled from a bin. One that spins like a ballot. Storytelling performance by Georgia Lucy

Saturday 15th of June | ¢ompo$t aeration |  Lecture performances 2 - 4pm

Lucas Ilhein - Baking Earth - Soil and the Carbon Economy
Grace Gamage - On forgetting her ambient body temperature
Second iteration of storytelling by Georgia Lucy

Install documentation: Remi Chauvin