Watch This Space Gallery, 2024. Spoken work poem performed at the opening of Stick Mob’s ‘Portal’ exhibition. See Pigeonhole Portal 

Stick Mob told to disappear
to keep the narrative free from anomalies
pigeonholed as deficit data
in need of top-down remedies
stamped and stapled for conformity
in offices, behind desks
brutal decisions justified as benevolent silver bullets
where clocks measure all manner of maps and plans

90 seconds to midnight
ticking

The scene is set to stage an efficient obscenity
bodies repeatedly kicked, flicked, stabbed, left for dead
pigeonhole dead
tell the cost of this slogan rally
strategic documents sanitise re-traumatise

    creating success together

    working like the best

Stick Mob do not forget
Arrernte Country and the cairns on the hills of County Meath
light boxes of impossible realities

Stick Mob do not forget
that we are quantum, sci-fi, everyday ancient shape shifters
listening with ancestors across hemispheres

Stick Mob do not forget
that data is living, engaged with
sensed through different methods, places, tools and technologies
woven

               a snake slides
a dog sniffs
delia walks Antulye ridges
winds blow strategic papers through Ntaripe gap

Inspired by: Victoria Alondra’s poem ‘Nobody’s Performance’, sub-terrain conversations with Craig San Roque, writing and illustrating with Stick Mob, daily walks of the Antulye ridges in the company and counsel of ancestors, delia, and Racy dog.