Camouflage Predator Species / Garden of eden

The world has less than five years to get carbon emissions under control or runaway climate change will become inevitable, the World Wildlife Fund warned recently. Considering that the Kyoto Protocol, aimed at combating global warming, was initially adopted in December 1997, and since that time no serious improvements have been achieved, one can imagine that this deadline (what a zynical ambiguity inherent in that expression) is not more than a hypothetical assumption without any chance to be realized. Changes in the world climate will result in a change of the world community’s way of living, in adopting different methods to face that phenomenon, in adapting our life-style to the new circumstances. To survive, a new species of human beings will come to existence, as a result of a physiological evolution. From our today’s point of view, can we predict how this species will look like and how it will behave?
In her "Camouflage Predator Species" series, Iv Toshain reflects on that dystopia, triggered off not only by environmental causes, but also by experiments in genetic engineering. It is a question of vital importance whether mankind can survive the future without that manipulations of our pure/poor life, since just an evolutionary development does not keep pace with the much faster acceleration of ecological changes. Involution as a process that follows the completion of evolution (e.g. 200 years ago it required several weeks to accomplish a distance of 1000 kilometers by man-made vehicles, nowadays one can make the same distance by plane within one hour), is much too slow, and a potential lightspeed – travelling at the end of this century raises the question what to do when you get out to a close-to-the-boil breeze after the end of your trip. Scientists should work hard to find a solution and since Iv Toshain is an artist, not a scientist, her imagination of species fit for the New World is not that of cyborgs, but of living creatures, more or less mutated.
With their hyperrealistic beauty, their aesthetic surface, these creatures still have the dignity of being animated with biological life – but what a life? A life as a combat, a day-to-day struggle for survival, a game how to decoy someone without getting lured themselves. Beauty makes one attractive. But it is superficial and transient, as the luscious colours of the flowers and fruits are, which are perishable as well - a memento mori, a still life, a natura morta, a dead nature.
The relationship between predator and prey is ambiguous: Everyone can be the former as well as the latter. But who will benefit from his/her role and how? Iv Toshain does not believe in the survival of the physically fittest, but in the survival of those who have the skills to play the game that assures your existence at its best: The one who has the better cards, the one who is more adaptable in situations and circumstances, who is flexible in changing positions whenever required, who is more tricky, can bluff better, pretending non-inherent qualities. It is a game that has been played all the time: Advertisements to make consumer goods attractive, leaving the individual unable to decide what brand really is the best, presented on billboards in a way that you even cannot ignore or escape them. Monotheism declares one God only, but several religions compete for the right interpretation, resulting in up to twelve houses of worship in small villages in the South Pacific. And not to forget political parties – well organized demagogy, where not only the best cards count, but also beauty is taken into consideration, as it was performed by some Condottiere recently.
May the best win – or survive! Iv Toshain does not make efforts to show ways how to make it, since the future of our human society is not predictable. It is expectable. For that reason, we do not need prophecies, revealing us an end times scenario, but some hints how to cope with a forthcoming situation. As things will irrevocably get changed, altering your self seem to be unavoidable. Your physical self, without altering your ego. Hopefully!

E. Treiber

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Camouflage species is a predator organism, mutation and symbiosis between plants, human and animal parts. An overspecialized creature.
This predator is possessing completely new identity and protective camouflage, using it to disguise himself from other species or military targets. The type of camouflage the species has developed depends on the environment in which they live – an environment that mirrors the social codes with stereotypes, consumerism, brain drain, power exertion, frivolity, material life - reflectied back to the audience, beautifully slik and glamorous, through a very dark mirror. Images, which are layered with the underlying disturbances that occur in a culture that celebrates youth, accievements and worships physical attractiveness. A confrontation with the thresholds beauty and gross, glamour and inferno, natural and artificial, detail and whole, innocence and viciousness.

The hyper-real beauty simply cannot be avoided. The observer is being pulled in by the rich over saturated color and elegantly balanced mimic nature form. Yet, upon closer observation, these forms don't actually exist in reality which raises questions about what it is we are actually seeing. This mysterious blend of recognizable imagery reconstructed into new and some what frightening forms begin to create a narrative that challenges the viewer to address issues such as humanity's impact on the environment, human interjection
into evolution and a host of social issues currently consuming our species.
Confined existence is extinction. They must spread out.

"Overspecialization leeds to extinction", Buckminster Fuller