CONQUEST OF THE USELESS
KK+JLD & SuperKaleidoscope (Kailana Sommer + Jack Lanagan Dunbar with Kim Fasher + Sarah Mosca)
Presented at Sydney Guild, Darlinghurst Sydney, 2013
Curated by Amelia Wallin, Hossein Ghaemi, Christopher Hodge
Conquest of the Useless was a collaboration between artists KK+JLD (Kailana Sommer + Jack Lanagan) and artist/curatorial collective SuperKaleidoscope (Kim Fasher and Sarah Mosca).
The project explored the precarious relationship between aspirations and failure in reference to the ancient Greek myth of Sisyphus. The faulted hero Sisyphus was sentenced by the Gods to his interminable fate; of rolling a rock up a mountain only to watch it roll back down under its own weight.
Addressing the melancholy and sense of poetic absurdity associated with our human longings and inevitable failings, the artists look to Albert Camus' essay 'The Myth of Sisyphus'. In the text Camus argues that there is an underlying contradiction between what we want and what we find in the universe. Seeking meaning, order or reason, often all we uncover is amorphous chaos. He interprets Sisyphus' tragedy as a metaphor with which to acknowledge absurdity as the eternal human condition. He also reasons, however, that Sisyphus' awareness of the limitations of his existence in itself, seems to grant him a release, allowing him to transcend the physical tragedy.
