Postcards from the Underground

Postcards from the Underground 2022 red filter postcards multiples
Artwork, image © Perdita Phillips and Astrida Neimanis the nonhuman
in collaboration with Astrida Neimanis and stygofauna
10.5 x 14.8 cm 7 fronts and 7 backs, limited delux and standard editions available price TBC
Limited edition postcards using red filtered double images, the fronts and backs contain text and images combined in random pairs
Project: both/and 20172019
Walkshop: Going underground: Multispecies encounters with rocks and water in the shadow of extraction 2017 Sydney-Lithgow-Sydney

These postcards are a collaboration with Astrida Neimanis that developed as part of the both/and project and an Artsource Global Cities residency undertaken at ArtSpace, Sydney in 2017. I had come to explore the extents and limitations of both/and — a shorthand description for the contradictions in modern life where we are consumers of energies, ecosystems and resources at the same time as we may disagree fiercely with the consequences of this same consumption.

“We live in times that are impure—confusing and compromised—and this requires contingent thinking and acting. What happens when artists get involved in complex, difficult issues, where different parties are involved and there might not be such a clearcut right and wrong? Or, alternatively, when the costs of ambivalence may be impossibly high?

Responses to the proposition of both/and are necessarily nuanced and complicated—but the concept can be distilled down to the role of complicity in social-ecological systems and how each of us struggle to maintain a contingent—yet effective—position as an artist, primate and ecosystem participant.”

In these works, Astrida and I were interested in exploring the worlds of stygofauna and their intimate connection to mining. The colour postcards use an optical masking technique that can be decoded with a red filter (similar to red cellophane) that is held up to the eye. The previously invisible cyan images are then revealed from beneath — alluding to the layers of concern in the project and the double state of both/and.