PAUL ROUX

Project Apology

29 January – 28 February 2014

Johannes Stegmann Art Gallery, Sasol Library

Please join us for the exhibition event on:

Wednesday 5 February 2014 at 19:00

Guest speaker:

Dr André Rose

Senior Lecturer at the Department of Community Health, University of the Free State

Begun by Paul Roux in 2007, Project Apology is an ongoing video documentation of an undertaking to apologize, in person and as a member of humanity, to non-human species on the planet that are being adversely affected by human activity.

Obviously such a mandate includes every last living creature and, as such, presents a very tall order, the unmanageability of such an undertaking becoming a big part of its content as a piece of art.

The project’s intent is to use satire as a means to deliver a serious message in an unconventionally and ‘amusingly’ palatable, yet provocative manner – in attempting to come to terms with, morally and spiritually, the human implications of our current scientific reality (evidenced, for example, in the current rate of species extinction documented by the International Union for Conservation of Nature – IUCN).

Project Apology aims to engage viewers in the scientific reality of the contemporary moment in a novel way. Of course, the issue of our severe and escalating impact on the planet sometimes seems trivial in a world where hundreds of millions of people have nothing to eat and more than a billion do not have access to clean water. The spiritual and ethical implications of our impact on the planet aside, to Roux these are equally important challenges, because rapid population and industrial growth will continue to have an escalating affect our own sustainability in various ways – from food production, through to climate change and water quality. Just as there are currently more than enough resources on the earth for every person to have more than enough to eat and to live comfortably, so are there enough resources to ensure that all beings have access to their birth right of a pristine ecosystem in which to flourish.

The scientific reality is that we are in a period of mass extinction and that, as part of a single greater symbiotic ecosystem, we are ultimately endangering our own survival. And so, to Roux, the act of apology, though intended partly as a satire of contemporary humanity, is also an acknowledgement of our common humanity and of our true nature as part of the single global ecosystem. Project Apology is thus also an apology to ourselves, an acknowledgment of ourselves.