Torrent Blossom
Torrent Blossom is an online exhibition centring emerging and established artists and writers whose practices challenge the colonial state of Australia.
It arrives on a tide of global upheaval: urgent waves of social, cultural, political and environmental reflection, cresting and crashing through our shared lens of captivity – and captive online engagement.
Megan Cope
The Blaktism
2014
The Blaktism (2014), sees a young female “White Aborigine” undertake a sacred ceremony in which she receives the rite of authenticity validated by archetypes and authorities (The Priest, White Anglo-Saxon Protestant, Bogan, Disapproving Academic, Aussie Babe, Tradie and Hipster) ever present in the Australian cultural landscape.
The sacred ceremony itself, results in a satirical cultural assimilation dance party whereby all Australians are liberated, celebrated equally and transgressively renewed through physical and gestural adjustments.
The Blaktism seeks to challenge audience members with subterranean racism and its relationship within popular culture. It highlights the absurd nature of racial classification and disdain for cultural self-determination in 21st century Australia. This 8 minute pop video interrogates notions of identity, power and Australian social history.
The Blaktism… highlights the absurd nature of racial classification and disdain for cultural self-determination in 21st century Australia.
Megan Cope
Megan Cope, The Blaktism, 2014, HD video with sound, 8 minutes 4 seconds. Courtesy the artist and Milani Gallery, Brisbane.
Transcript:
Narrator:
There comes a time in the history of the Commonwealth, when we must become fully reconciled to our past if we are to go forward with confidence, to embrace our future, in this great Nation; Australia.
We gather today as good citizens to witness the Blaktism of Megan Cope and to commemorate her passage into becoming an authentic Aborigine.
We Australians recognise that you have been recognised by the Quandamooka People as a member of the community and therefore recognised as an Aboriginal.
In the eyes of true Australians, we hereby grant consent of the authorisation of Megan Cope’s Aboriginality, we assert that through this ritual of pigment resolution you will be fully potentiated and seen as a real Aborigine by all great citizens of this nation.
Megan, Do you accept our recognition of you as an Aboriginal person?
Under the sign of the southern cross forged with the might of the union jack, I hereby Blaktise you Megan Cope for the commonwealth of Australia, as an authentic Aborigine.
May Megan Cope, as an Aboriginal person, attain the same entitlements as other Australians, living as a member of a single Australian community, enjoying the same political and other rights, powers and privileges and becomes subject to obligations, duties, beliefs, hopes and aspirations of true Australians.
are you sure?
by Jazz Money, 2020
view text as PDF
Being white-passing means that folk often try to discredit or deny my identity as a Wiradjuri woman. And while it is painful, I also recognise the privilege of being fair skinned in a colony that directs far greater violences against my identifiably Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander kin. My fair skin keeps me safe from many aspects of the colony, and my privileges are greater due to my proximity to whiteness, my education and my employment opportunities.
This poem is a collection of statements said to me in the workplace, university, high school and dinner tables. These were the thoughts that came into my head when watching The Blaktism and doesn’t speak for anyone’s lived experience but my own. Always grateful to our community. Always grateful for the sisters and brothers fighting for a brighter future. Always was, always will be.\
