“Political Acid” feels like a protest and a joke, a commentary and a question, a breath held in anticipation of something that may never fully materialise—capturing the essence of counter-culture, with all its beauty and futility.
Lucien Aether
“Political Acid”
The white balloon, fragile and ephemeral, carries with it a sense of impermanence. Its form is sustained by your breath, a literal piece of you—life-giving air—imbued into an object. This act of inflation can be seen as an intimate, personal gesture, suggesting the infusion of personal identity, energy, or even dissent into something transient. The balloon, like political movements or ideas, is vulnerable to deflation, to popping, to disappearing as quickly as it appeared. It’s a commentary on the fragility of political ideals and counter-cultures, how they are often temporary, subject to external pressures, and at the mercy of forces beyond their control.
The tiny grey commas scattered across the balloon’s surface are intriguing marks. In language, a comma is a pause, a breath, a moment of suspension before continuation. These commas are the ongoing, unfinished nature of political discourse and cultural resistance—suggesting that these ideas are in a constant state of becoming, never fully arriving at a conclusion. They might also imply fragmentation, the disjointed nature of thoughts and movements in a chaotic world. The choice of grey, a color often associated with ambiguity and neutrality, reflect the murky, uncertain nature of political landscapes, where clear distinctions are hard to make.
The label with a window cut to reveal a scrolling text on an LCD screen is a small, controlled portal into a larger narrative, much like how technology mediates our understanding of the world. The screen, with its constant, unchanging scroll, contrasts with the organic, changeable nature of the balloon. This highlights how digital media often fixates on narratives, looping them endlessly, even as the world they describe is in constant flux. The act of reading through this small window mirrios the way we consume information today—fragmented, through small screens, with only partial views of complex realities.
By attaching the text about “Political Acid” to the balloon, a direct link between the object and its meaning is created, but the form of delivery—a tiny LCD screen carried by balloon—is almost absurd, surreal, evoking a sense of dissonance. It’s as if you’re saying that our political realities are mediated through devices that are, in themselves, perhaps not entirely suitable for the weight of the content they bear.
Political acid is a meditation on the nature of political and cultural resistance, on the delicate balance between connection and alienation. The use of the artist’s breath to inflate the balloon adds a personal element to the piece, while the digital scrolling text ties it to the broader, impersonal currents of information flow in the modern world. The whole work seems to oscillate between the profound and the whimsical, much like the dadaist traditions implied by the overarching mama context, challenging the viewer to consider the absurdities inherent in our current socio political climate.