Christina Battle × Mercedes Webb

Christina Battle’s The Hex is On has an eerie prescience for those less acquainted with the apocalypses people of the global majority have been living and thriving through for centuries. Unfortunately these hexes remain contemporary as we continue living through a global pandemic with 90 seconds to midnight on the doomsday clock and the ever present reminders of climate collapse on the horizon. Greed, scarcity mindsets and the wealthy only wanting to be “charitable” if they get a tax receipt from the very people creating these conditions and in cahoots with those creating climate collapse are just some of the damning aspects of contemporary life.

In The Hex is On Battle creates quick gifs free from any edits or self-scrutiny, researched and created the same day. The series began as a response to news headlines and depicts Battle’s initial interaction with and reaction to it. Each gif represents an experimental approach to work through the unrelenting multitude of many faceted content put out by news media.

Despite each gif being created in specific cultural moments from specific articles, they are kaleidoscopic when viewed throughout time. Feeling both timeless and like simulacra of the endless news cycles. I appreciate that they feel zoomed out to the larger overarching contexts of each instance the gif was made within, an overview that is obfuscated in the regular news and dissociates issues from socio-political and economic realities that create the conditions for their continuance. I have reacted to gifs during specific times from my context in Alberta during the pandemic in 2022. The headlines I have cited here were researched based on the gif title and aren’t necessarily the one Christina is referencing.

July 8, 2015: A blissful moment of stalled stocks thanks to a technical error. The NFL washington redskins trademark comes into question… publicly.

Whiteness signified by a smooth flat lawn, carefully curated and free of native plants–a tiny apocalypse for native grasses and their myriad relations.

Seemingly small but still under-recognized by the general population as a sign of imperialism and colonialism.

July 30, 2014: Death toll in Gaza reaches 1,346, while 56 Israeli soldiers and 3 civilians have been killed.

This gif takes on another layer of meaning when viewed from a (whichever) wave Pandemic-ridden Earth. Death tolls rise. Here in so-called Alberta, fascist Jason Kenney tramples on as premier of death, with his cronies and followers using the government as an excuse to slough off personal agency and culpability. People like my family and I, with multiple comorbidities, have ancestors who survived horrific epidemics—mine barely survived tuberculosis in Haida Gwaii. Many on the disability spectrum are still isolated, still in need of human closeness; they are both forgotten, and seen as the ones who “need to be more careful.” Here is a lonely world full of death, destruction, and the suffocating despair that comes from capitalism’s unrelenting hold on governmental bodies who have not earned their keep on Indigenous lands.

March 13, 2014: A day earlier, an explosion in East Harlem attributed to a gas leak caused the destruction of two buildings, along with other damage. An earthquake of magnitude 6.3 occurs near Kyushu Island, Japan.

I can’t care for myself like I need to because it’s been too long–too long for anyone to have such little human contact, too long to be afraid. When that fear started, long before the pandemic, it reminded me that my body is more important than capitalism and that slowness is not weakness, it’s care. The heat is rising, the pressure is on, and most people are too fucking distracted to do anything about it. Too fucked over by careless systems that were never meant to care for people in all situations. Ignored by those rich enough to delude themselves into thinking they’re (more) important. Money ≠ Smart.

Indigenous people are everywhere, on every landmass; some have been made to forget the splendour of their lineage and their power to hex capitalism within their very existence. What can anyone do in the face of such greed and hatred? Suicidal destruction. What do you do when the rift between those speaking truth and those with power is so huge that it feels as though nobody is listening or taking you seriously enough to shift themselves? I don’t know.

September 4, 2014: Rescue crews continue to search for survivors in East Harlem, 8 killed, 70 injured. West Africa Ebola virus outbreak; World Health Organization says death total in West Africa exceeds 1,900.

As weak as I have felt over the past decade and beyond, many of us survive and hold onto ourselves and communities with compassion and care, tell ourselves this because we know our hopes for the future are worthwhile. Fuck grind culture, I want to sleep. Fuck rushing towards nothing but more rushing and exhaustion. Fuck working five days a week. We’re working ourselves and Earth to death, but Earth will be reborn, we will not. And maybe that isn’t such a bad thing. Still holding out that we won’t fuck up this chance, even though it’s hard to see past the ongoing already present destruction.

October 6, 2020 Trump Returns to White House, Removes Mask, as Number of Coronavirus Cases Around Him Mount

On February 13, 2022, as the white supremacist truck convoy in so-called canada continues, I get asked for my blood quantum from a mamatła.

I’m so fucking tired. This is not normal, and the old normal will never be acceptable again. Everyone deserves to grieve even as the waves keep coming and trying to swallow us whole–we still exist and are living.