The X-Ray Spex were a British new wave punk band formed in 1976 by female lead singer Poly Styrene. The illustrative and brand work I have produced is a personal homage to this bands brief but explosive influence upon the early punk/ pop music scene. Moreover, the X-Ray Spex sought to address issues of civil rights, feminism, and environmentalism through their music. This intellectual injection of social awareness and ethical reflection better reflected the ethos of punk culture. While the Sex Pistols, The Clash, Misfits and scores of other forefathers of punk droned on about drinking, drugs and anarchy, X-ray Specks articulated their socio-global angst with a clarity and purpose. With song titles like, Art-I-Ficial, Warrior in Woolworths, I Live Off You, Genetic Engineering, and The Day The World Turned Day-Glo, X-ray Spex blasted a spotlight onto the toxicity of capitalism, consumerism and sexism. Although the X-ray Spex were only active from 1976 to 1978, their outcries for social and environmental change have only grown more relevant as time marches on.
By creating this box set I am drawing attention to the ethical ground which the X-ray Spex thrashed, cried out and performed upon. In doing so, I also draw attention to all that has not been resolved since 1978. As we the conscious consumers, resolve to lift ourselves from the primordial economic and social muck of the modern world, the beasts of environmentally destructive industries and archaic social controls mutate and adapt.
Reflecting upon this notion of a beastly mergence between the industrial environmental assault upon our planet, social control through gender oppression and humanity as a disposable commodity, I conceived a ravenous mythical creature. With a goat’s propensity to indiscriminately consume anything and everything that passes within range, and the dexterity and independent intelligence of an octopi’s arms. The Octogoat is the logical evolutionary outcome. Each item grasped within or around the Octogoat’s chilled, slimy tentacle speaks to an aspect of the exponentially toxic impact of corporate greed, institutionally mutilated moral awareness, deficit of empathy, and dislocation from our very source of our humanity.
Evolution and Predation of the Octogoat
Do you see the elephant in the room? The massive and obvious body of unequivocal veracity who stands before us. That blatant truth we have collectively agreed to deny? In the metaphorical room of our shared human experience, these metaphorical elephants have been standing around, growing fat on our conscious dismissal of their presence as it suits our cultural, social, economic or spiritual needs. Our specie’s stubborn resistance to sacrifice comfort and control for enlightenment and peace has filled our daily life with elephants. By our own willful ignorance and negation, our elephants have no space left to occupy as their heavy bodies press into one another, immobilizing and suffocating each of us to death. With our final gasp for air we proclaim, “It’s all a lie, there are no elephants!”
How many of us choose to see them? How many of us choose to respond with clarity, courage and discipline? How many of us are strong enough and brave enough to shift our awareness and see the difference between humanity and cultural fabrication of morality? How many of us are willing to sacrifice our perceived comfort and liberate the elephants? With such symbolic overpopulation, elephants have become an outdated allegory. To spite their stature, this placid nature is inadequate and outdated. The Octogoat is their replacement, the invasive species. The metaphorical GMO, mutated and grown in the laboratory of mindless consumption and greed. The Octogoat is the ultimate expression of cultural, social and ethical illness. the one who ate the entire heard, one by one. We no longer have the opportunity to feel the gradual crush of elephants because the Octogoat does not lumber, make room for others with a heavy shift of it’s body, hesitate or patiently wait to be seen. With swift efficiency and insatiable hunger the Octogoat is the personification of mass consumption. The Octogoat is our collective creation and the acceleration of our collective demise. The Octogoat is not the elephant in the room. The Octogoat is the sum of all elephants. The Octogoat ate every last elephant in the room for breakfast. Those who choose to keep their eyes closed and turn away will put every living thing that remains on the dinner menu.
Alice and Lysol
Alice in converse, once called her reality a wonderland. These days, all forms of wonder are dissolving before our very eyes in this toxic waste land of consumption. She sports a gas mask as a thick poisonous smog lingers in the air. What better way to refresh yourself on a hot smoggy day than an ice cold can of sweet fizzy Lysol. While children’s’ bellies swell with chronic disease inducing “soft” drinks, our toilet bowls glisten with chemical cleaners to be flushed into the water systems and absorbed into soil that can no longer support life.
McDonalds GMOs
Feeling hungry? Then step right up and fill your toilets with the greasy excrement of growth hormones, antibiotics and industrial animal genocide sharply packaged as fast “food.” It’s like a cigarette for your col0n! If your happy meal has left you feeling peckish, a sweet steaming ear of genetically modified corn will hit the spot. Don’t let that sweet buttery mouthful fool you, that GMO is sure to bite you back.
Pills
Eventually, every one of these delectable products and consequences of mindless consumption do bite back… from our insides out. Yet, there is no need to worry. While chronic disease and fatigue takes hold, there are plenty of prescription pills to take the edge off. Energetically drained and chemically crippled, death comes shrouded in a lab “tested”, chemically concocted, opiate cloak.
Perhaps these triumphs of the West are not available to you. Like it or not, this chaos of abundance is at your doorstep in one form or another. Everyone’s gotta eat. Especially your young children and elderly family displaced by foreign investment aiming to profit from your homeland’s natural resources. So if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em! Think of it less as modern slavery and more as a highly structured career path. If you feel like this isn’t the destiny you envisioned, pay attention. You’ve got choices!
Fashion Tec
On the coattails of the industrial revolution, textiles and fast fashion are driving millions of people into abject poverty and starvation throughout India, Bangladesh, Asia and the Middle East. If this industry strikes you as passé, consider the Technological revolution. It’s just like the Industrial revolution: dehumanizing, unethical, fueled by capitalistic greed, but vastly more far reaching in terms of global impact. Don’t dismay, the future is now and you are an essential component. A fast paced and challenging career with a major tech brand is ready for you. Positions assembling computer and cellphone hardware in China are always open, as an average of 200 workers are killed on the job EVERY day!
Blood Diamonds
From South America to China, Africa to India, if you fancy the great outdoors, the mining industry is a perfect fit. You won’t find much fresh air down here but the health plan is to die for. Your dramatically brief lifespan in this industry may go unnoticed but it is far from unappreciated. The work you do is essential to the major tech companies that depend on you. If your interests are a bit more aesthetic, the precious gems industry throughout Africa has been booming over the past 150 years as European and American corporations bribe corrupt governments, incite civil war and enslave local and displaced citizens. Blood diamonds are one of the ugliest gems, cut and polished with the highest quality of greed and corruption. If only we could figure out a way to squeeze the blood that went into the diamond, back out again.
https://www.pri.org/stories/2014-06-13/these-6-countries-are-among-worst-world-workers
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