West Space Gallery, August 2008
Artist – Tai Snaith
Flight or Fight
The irukandji jellyfish, found in the northeast waters of Australia, is tinier than the head of a matchstick. It is almost impossible to see but its effects on the human nervous system are as horrifying as say, a great white shark were circling us. Likened to a bad LSD trip, unsuspecting victims of the irukandji will experience not only searing pain but also an overwhelming sense of fear and doom.
Victims have been known to sprint down the beach screaming as if death itself were chasing them, their exertion thereby rushing the poison to their heart and killing them. Once, a stung lifesaver was discovered in the public toilet block, his arms wrapped around the toilet and bawling – ambulance officers had to pry him away from the toilet bowl.
Most of our fear is believed to have stemmed from an experience, whilst Freudian psychoanalytical thought views our irrational fears as a result of something repressed – be it a memory or a desire. But does the chemical fear triggered by the irukandji jellyfish mean the same experience for every person? Or is everyone’s experience of impending doom different?
Fight or Flight is a series of new works on paper and vintage book covers by Melbourne artist Tai Snaith. Combining collage and drawing in a makeshift bomb shelter, these detailed works explore ideas of survival, animal instinct and an impending doom. Snaith considers the possibility of harboring old books as if it this dugout shelter were to be a futuristic study retreat for a bored survivor to mess with the intelligentsia of an old and long-gone world.
Yet, despite the morose finality of most ‘end of world’ scenarios, there is a comic sense of play and the absurd as Tai Snaith’s mind seems to wander (as one’s mind would inside a bomb shelter when the novelty of impending doom wears off). Like a child infuriates their parents by scribbling over the faces of politicians in today’s newspaper – turning the prime minister into a drag queen or drawing boobs on a footballer, if I remember correctly, she boldly etches her own vision onto the old and reinvents the past whilst waiting for the doom to unlock the latch to her hidey-hole.
The term ‘Fight or Flight’ has become a somewhat commonplace and flippant piece of information amongst humans. What was once a seminal theory is repeatedly referenced – often without a true understanding of Walter Cannon’s discovery or the adaptations he later made to his thesis. Most of us know that ‘fight or flight’ is the response in an animal’s brain when faced with a threat, but what we may forget is that when we are faced with danger, many of us neither fight or runaway – rather, like chameleons, many of us try to disappear. You may have experienced this on the train, when a man, psyched and leering for a fight, scans the carriage trying to catch someone’s eye. Those keen on self-preservation will studiously avoid meeting his eyes. We will try not to stand out.
Charles Darwin once wrote that “… fear is the most depressing of all emotions” as he described scared animals literally depressing themselves by flattening their ears and crouching close to the ground. But while some wild animals may react this way to conserve energy, neither wanting to ‘fight or flight’ unless it is absolutely necessary, often humans will stay still due to social restraint. The bushfires in Victoria early this year is an example of just how dulled our survival instincts have become.
Journalists wrote of how people in the direct line of fire on Black Saturday were paralysed not by fear, but by complacency. Tourists took photos of the black furls of smoke coming toward them before returning poolside. Drinks were still being poured at a wedding banquet even when the staff outside were throwing buckets of water onto the reception centre. And while many of us appear to ignore very real threats (think climate change), there is a constant increase of social phobias in the Western world. People experience survival responses such as adrenaline saturation and blushing on a crowded tram or in a supermarket queue. Panicking like birds trapped inside a house – we bang ourselves against the windows of our very own society. For humans, it seems there are other influences on our fear beyond that of experience and instinct. We have the unfortunate gift of anticipation and imagination. We dread things that might happen. Things that are less likely to happen to us such as snakebite or drink spiking or a plane crash than say an ordinary car accident or a fatal melanoma. But because we have read about it, seen it on TV or been told about it, we can’t help but dread it.
It is strange how little we contemplate the remnants of animal instinct we retain under our own skins, we tend to either dress up this intuition as human intelligence or disguise it with medical technology. Some of us seem so intent on disconnecting ourselves from these primal instincts that modern doctors can conduct surgery – such as clipping a small segment of involuntary nerves – to stop surges of intense blushing. Unique to humans, blushing is a response from part of our nervous system that prepares the body for action in a ‘fight or flight’ situation.
But the question remains – why do our bodies undermine us?
Red-faced, we inform others that we may be feeling vulnerable, deceiving ourselves or lying, often despite our wishes to do so. Perhaps our bodies – our so-called human intelligence – are trying to tell us that there is more than simply ‘fight or flight’? Which returns us to Tai Snaith’s apocalyptic shelter. For while the den is an icon of doom, there is a sense of resilience in Snaith’s accompanying artwork. Her creations refuse to be spooked. She is unable to fully retreat from the world, regardless of whether it still exists or has been turned into a wasteland. Rather she seeks to recreate the world by decorating this underground den with signs of life.
At the beginning of this century, American psychologist Shelley Taylor introduced an alternative response model to danger. Not disproving ‘Fight or Flight’ response, Taylor suggested that it was not the only response available to us. She coined the Tend and Befriend response, wherein animals (including humans) may manage threats and stressful encounters by seeking social support and tending to their offspring. Taylor recounts situations where the females of the species, in particular among primates whose offspring are typically helpless, cannot attack a predator for fear of being wounded and therefore unable to care for their offspring, but nor can they run away without leaving their offspring behind. Instead, Taylor suggests, they tend to their offspring and befriend a community in which they can be protected by the sheer volume of numbers.
There is a sense of Tend and Befriend in Tai Snaith’s shelter. To begin with, she has invited us inside it. And while many us may think bomb shelters belong in the future, we are wrong. There are thousands of individuals already inside their secret hidey-holes, scared people bunkering down for the apocalypse. Army disposal shops are inundated with people getting ready for the end of the world. The difference between the shelter we find ourselves in right now and the many others dug out in suburban backyards, ancient cities and abandoned old towns, is that the inhabitant of this abode hasn’t given up. Instead of destruction and stasis, the resident of this den, Tai Snaith, seems hell-bent on creation.