2 B R Ø 2 B: in defying of the 'future perfect continuous tense', 2020

(from the series to be or knot to be)

Universalising claims of the theory of Anthropocene have been challanged by postcolonial thinking. The end of the world for some worlds and people have already happened and keep happening in 'unjust patterns of pain' in the words of Donna Haraway. (Haraway, Staying with the Trouble)

In a symposium I attended in November 2019 called "After Progress | Plural Potentialities," American Anthropologist Elizabeth A. Povinelli challenged the classical imagination of the doomsday, coming with the possible climate catastrophe, by thinking it alongside the colonial catastrophe that has taken place in the Indigeneous and Black Atlantic contexts.

This video is a homage to the existence of the truths about unjust patterns of pain still present, yet are not present-ed in mainstream and less layered narratives. And the knot is a reminder that there is more to truths than that of the status quo and also how language can be used to challenge them.

Some narratives fit more neatly into categories, which make them easier to digest, and this usually happens at the cost of eradicating the narratives of the marginalised and the oppressed, or worse of worlds that are no longer in be-ing.

Note:The title 2 B R Ø 2 B is a play on the title of the science fiction shorty story by the American writer Kurt Vonnegut. The short story's title '2 B R 0 2 B' (the zero is pronounced as "naught") is a reference to the original "to be or not to be." Where not can sound as naught, it also can also sound as knot.