A L E X G A W R O N S K I

Alex Gawronski, Business. As Usual, 2024

Mega, Redfern, NSW

(Ceiling tiles, galvanized steel, flourescent tubes and other light fittings, electrical cables, cable-ties, electrical tape, timber).

An active start-up enclosed by a glass partition, carries on as normal behind a larger empty space that appears to have been stripped and abandoned, in a state of collapse, a recent urban ruin.

We live in a world of intersecting crises; political, ecological, social. ‘No more Business as Usual’ was a catch-cry that arose during and immediately after the Covid-19 Pandemic. Up until then, governments around the world and especially those of the developed anglophonic West, had dedicated decades to pursuing punitive austeritarian economic and social policies as a widespread extension of class warfare. When Covid hit, suddenly these same governments managed ‘somehow’ to find enough financial resources to support populations that couldn’t work. Of course, there were also extensive layoffs, and in countries like the US, governmental demonisation particularly of those of the lowest economic strata who ‘refused to work’ in their efforts to stay alive. 

Since the Covid crisis has been assumed ‘over’ (it isn’t), the ‘business as usual’ model of government endorsed corporate extraction and blanket austerity has returned. The possibilities of a better, fairer, more just, world that many experiencing lockdowns hoped for, has not eventuated. In many respects it has gotten worse. Not only has the outdated, myopically anti-future, profit-seeking autopilot mindset of ‘business as usual’ returned, it has done so with radical irony. Supposedly ‘neutral’ capitalism now veers ever more towards authoritarianism, if not outright fascism, as one of the most effective means of controlling growingly dissenting populations.

Attendant with this situation, is the blatant Western-led trouncing of International Law. And yet, institutions demanding our respect, including governments supposedly adhering to the values of the laws many of them signed, have evidenced the true nature of their interests – ethno-supremacy and economic domination. The hypothetical values of enlightenment – freedom of speech, freedom of association, basic human rights and equality – professed by mainstream liberals are currently in the most abject, decrepit and morbidly laughable state.

This work did not seek to illustrate the conditions above but to create an affective environment in real-space and time, that echoes a much greater socio-political scenario and pervasive global mood.