What if…

...we had been born into a skin color other than our own?

June 2020. Part of the artist's role is to stir the moral imagination. When we challenge what we think of as foundational ’truths' - like the gender, skin, time and space we are each born into - and rather understand them as random spins of a cosmic lottery wheel, there-in can lie a path to humility, compassion, reconciliation, justice.



Moral imagination serves as a counterpoint to "moral distancing" - the human tendency to casually discount the suffering of another due to to their difference to oneself - geographical, temporal, sexual, ethnic, physical. I find it a really useful concept, explaining, for example, how we can ignore an email asking us for $10 to feed a starving child, how we can live comfortably with systemic racism, and allow environmental destruction despite the cost to future generations.

Moral distancing has a practical value in a world of relentless suffering and limited resources - but it also becomes the foundation (whether conscious or sub-conscious) of inaction.

It seems that the murder of George Floyd has managed to tear the veil of moral distancing that I and so many of us have been guilty of in previously not supporting the cause of BLM. This gives me hope that some lasting change is possible.

Contemporary inspirations:
@IamRachelRicketts: Fuck your Intentions
@askewone: When civilisations collapse all that remains is the art