2002
'REFUGEE ISLAND' streetsign-alteration-kit
Mickie Quick
Place the profile of the machine-gun in the hands of the figure on the left and point it towards the head of the figure on the right. Be careful not to cover over the bit where the soldier grabs the arms of the refugee.
Mickie Quick's distributed guerrilla street intervention into the toxic xenophobic discourse around asylum seekers and refugees exemplifies DIWO (Do It With Others).
Specifically, it was a response to the Tampa incident not long before, as well as a general response to Australian refugee
politics. It's stunning in its simplicity. In Australia, pedestrian crossing spaces are denoted by yellow street signs depicting one person leading another person, and the words Refuge Island. Quick's street-sign alteration kit contained stickers of a map of Australia and a rifle, and the letter E. In the tradition of culture jamming and tactical media interventions (remember those!), people could alter the signs swiftly, producing a new assemblage of soldier + gun, detained person, island of the doomed. Participants could photograph their handiwork then upload to a public archive.
infiltrating, disrupting, disseminating has been a core mission of VNS Matrix. In Quick's work we sense a thrill of influences, from 70s/80s BUGA UP civil disobedience billboard graf to mobilisation and interconnection of struggles via citizen journalism. This period of inventive refugee activism birthed campaigns by artist-led collectives like 'We are All Boat People' and v-I-s-a-s, and organising on the activist-built Indymedia platform and a hushwork of listservs.
‘REFUGEE ISLAND’ streetsign-alteration-kit enabled people to symbolically enact their disgust and rage. To transform impotence in the face of Kafkaesque machinations by a government that likened asylum prisons to "holiday camps", and media monopolies that towed the li[n]es.
Small lives unmattering, lips stitched, border panic.
https://www.realtime.org.au/the-artist-and-the-refugee-tooling-up-for-action/