This is the interim poster,  or flyer, for the  first  exhibition for the 3 year collective Mallee Routes project that is to be held  at the Atkins Photo Lab new photography  gallery.  The  exhibition opens on Friday  October 7th,  and it runs for around a month. It  is a work in progress exhibition, that basically  says, 'this is how we started the project everyone.'     

The poster/flyer  was designed by Eric Algra, one of three  photographers involved in the project. He is the project  member  who has  the  most extensive  photographic archives for the Mallee.    

The Mallee Routes project has its own website---though this  is still in a rudimentary state---with a blog containing a few posts.  This means that the  project  now has a public profile.  The  overarching  statement  of the project can be seen here. 

I'm not sure how I am going to proceed with my part in the project. I've been too caught up in curation to  make  photograph day trips to the Mallee., or to go the library to find books that inform us what happened   in the Mallee during the 20th century. I am not even sure how I will  connect the photography up to the Humanities, which appear to be under fire from every direction.

I am thinking along the lines of trauma in the context of an unpleasurable event that forces itself upon the psyche again and again; an unpleasurable event of being economically forced to move from a place that was  home; an event  that the person was not prepared for. Maybe link this to the idea of Nachträglichkeit meaning afterwards, belatedly or  delayed as such.

This displacement can result in a  traumatic neurosis that is s a consequence of an extensive breach being made in the protective shield against excessive amounts of stimulation and excluding unsuitable kinds of stimuli. What causes trauma is a breach in an otherwise ef cacious barrier against stimuli. 

What produces a traumatic neurosis, in other words, is a fundamental lack of preparedness, a structural immaturity or vulnerability against which there can be no developmental safeguard. What causes trauma, thus, is an event that comes too soon, an event that we don’t see coming, an event that surprises us and suspends our comprehension. And it’s not only what we do not understand but also that we do not understand, i.e., the fact that we do not understand: our incomprehension.