Bernedette Muthien
South Africa
Bernedette Muthien
Muthien offers us a bare and wry glimpse of various aspects of being and living - in our quests to satisfy our basic needs and necessities, desires, fantasies and comforts. By revealing the hierarchies we assign to different lives and species, as well as their interconnections; she points to the webs and contradictions of 'modern' living. Ultimately, she warns that what we perceive to be progress is often also destructive, or at the expense of 'others' and our planet.
BIOGRAPHY
Bernedette Muthien co-founded and directs an NGO, Engender, which works in the intersectional areas... More >
Progress
i am a pig hollow gothic take these pig guts fill my plucked and charred chicken carcass then like the township shanty i am as species succumb to inexorable evolution
rolling in mud
till even moisture’s fled
and dried cracked earth
fills every orifice
as i breathe soil thru hairy nostrils
deprived of any air
lunar plexus scraped bare
of all light
lost without its burgled ghouls and gargoyles
to fill an ancient prescription (condoms)
for pleasure devoid of dis-ease
and equally unwanted offspring –
for a most modern minority
offall’s a delicacy:
“take clean sheep’s brains
braise with a peeled and finely chopped onion
add fresh chillies
season with salt and pepper to taste”
with lead mercury asbestos
i want to be obese with heavy metals
cellulite of quivering corrugated iron
screeching in the gale
unprotected in the midst of this fierce cape storm
sweep me off my illusive foundations
wash me clean blow me dry
and set me free
of the infinite spirals of
life love death life love death life love death (ad infinitum)
let me step aside for hardier rhinos, white elephant bulls
centaurs and firedragons
maybe
