Due to Lack of Interest, Tomorrow
has been Cancelled [2008-2015]:
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For a period of seven years I have travelled the southeastern part of the U.S extensively. All the while I submerged myself in the Southern Gothic, the local literary movement derived from 19th century Anglo-Saxon Romantic Gothic literature. Under the influence of religious fervor, the lush and sultry natural environment and the social affairs of the time this narrative changed in focus from the metaphysical to the particulars of the human condition. As opposed to the original Gothic novel it found evil not in the supernatural but in the mundane, in everyday life.
Through the years of this project it seems that I have followed a somewhat similar course as the Southern Gothic narrative did from its origins. I started with the dark, Sublime wilderness (The Beginning, 2008; Nature, 2009) and through the politics of fear, nostalgia and religion (Violence, 2010; Mortality, 2011; Religion, 2012) I finally arrived at humankind (The Human Condition, 2013; The End, 2014). In seven years and seven chapters I chronologically follow my travels, my research and my thinking, ever deeper into a region defined by poverty, religion and racism.
This publication is part of a larger work in progress; it’s the provisional outcome of a project that has taken quite a while to find its final destination. I tend to do that – I read, research and photograph a subject so extensively that it becomes a challenge to distinguish its essentials. Like with kudzu, an invasive vine that covers large parts of the southern states and kills everything in its path, I get entangled in an information overload. So, in addition to 102 photographs, both in color and black and white, written observations by me and rather a long short story by musician Jim White about Glossolalia I have accumulated quite a large collection of artifacts. Next to 19th century mourning covers, old photo postcards and press pictures depicting Martin Luther King, the KKK and religious subjects I have found beautiful mourning garments, (parts of) dead animals, and mammy dolls. I have racist and Confederate stuff. I even own a vinyl record of the evangelist Jimmy Swaggart that he named “The Plague”.
The book project Due to Lack of Interest Tomorrow Has Been Cancelled deals with the universal fear of dying and with our desire to understand and bridge the gap between ourselves and the unknown. We try to fill this potentially dangerous conceptual void with — amongst several other things — storytelling, science, art and religion. I use some of these to try to comprehend and make visible something fictional and immaterial. To me it all makes sense, in an irrational way. But after all the Deep South is not a rational place
The publication consists of around hundred photographs, written observations, some artworks by outsider artists and found antique real photo postcards, as well as the story by musician Jim White. The graphic design by Michaël Snitker is modernistic and understated, to complement my Romantic, subjective and gritty photography. The book is published by publishing house Lecturis and has been funded by the Mondriaan Fund.
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