Black Swan Pig / Swig
Polyurethane foam, Papier Mache, duck feathers.
60 cm x 218 cm x 68 cm
The first truth
In stark contrast to the whitewashed pigsty and the colourful pigs within it, a black winged pig swoops down to the tableau below, providing a tension and dynamism to the overall scene.
Derived from an amalgamation of the financial concept of a “Black Swan” event, an event that cannot be predicted or anticipated and that of the old English metaphor “when pigs fly”, the Black Swan Pig (or Swig) perhaps offers an indeterminate promise of relief to the events below.
A black swan event refers back to a time in 18th Century Europe when the general understanding was that only white swans existed on earth. That changed when Australia was colonised in 1788, and the first black swan was identified. In an instant, the previously held belief had to be adjusted to the new reality. In finance, this concept was developed further to embrace the fact that rare events that are beyond the limits of normal expectation have a disproportionally large effect on markets.
Because these events are unpredictable, we find them difficult to absorb and rationalise psychologically, and tend to try and explain them with the benefit of hindsight, into neatly packaged understandable occurrences.
We try and give relief to our state of cognitive dissonance by making the random nature of the event more palatable to our minds by ascribing prior reasons as to why it happened.
The fight against disorder is placated by our natural instincts to give explanations to events, when actually entropy reigns as the natural order of things.
Is there redemption implied here? Does Swig carry promise of some sort of a solution to the mess that it is flying towards? The answer is of course, by definition, indeterminate. Yet one can only wonder: does it portend a good, positive happening, a moral renewal perhaps, or just another dose of the same old thing? The size of the wings suggest that perhaps this particular pig could actually fly, that there is actually a chance of salvation despite all the odds…
The Black Swan is a highly improbable event with three main features. It is unpredictable, it carries a massive impact, and, after the fact, reasons and explanations are created to support the idea that makes the event appear less random and more predictable than it was.
Why is this so? Why do we not acknowledge the phenomenon of Black Swans until after they occur? Perhaps humans are naturally predisposed to finding reasons that the event occurred so that their unease in experiencing the event is ameliorated. If there is a rational reason for everything happening, then there is order in the world, and we are in control of our destiny.
We fool ourselves into thinking that we know more than we actually do.
We vastly underestimate the role that blind, random chance has on our lives. We tend to focus on what we already know, and spend precious little time trying to understand what we don’t know. We are deeply vulnerable to our innate drive to make things more simple, more understandable. As a consequence, we are exposed to believing narratives that are well constructed, that refer to facts that are taken at face value, and support and pander to our inbuilt belief systems.
The second truth
In stark contrast to the whitewashed pigsty and the colourful pigs within it, a black winged pig swoops down to the tableau below, providing tension and a sense of dynamism to the overall scene.
What is the nature of this pig? Roger Waters of the band Pink Floyd who wrote the lyrics of the song “Pigs on the Wing” suggests this:
If you didn't care
What happened to me
And I didn't care for you
We would zig-zag our way
Through the boredom and pain
Occasionally glancing up through the rain
Wondering which of the
Buggers to blame
And watching the pigs on the wing
Pigs on the Wing lyrics © Warner/Chappell Music, Inc
The somewhat depressing conclusion that might be arrived at is that the ordinary person will always be subject to the powers that be, that shady politicians and corrupt businessmen fly overhead, unapproachable and unassailable.
Donald Rumsfeld, the United States Secretary of Defence in 2002, in response to a question about the lack of evidence linking the government of Iraq with the supply of weapons of mass destruction to terrorist groups, stated: “Reports that say that something hasn't happened are always interesting to me, because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know.
We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns – the ones we don't know we don't know. And if one looks throughout the history of our country and other free countries, it is the latter category that tend to be the difficult ones.”
Jacob Zuma referred to a similar concern about fact and fiction at a SACTU conference in September 2018 when referring to the oral evidence led at the State Capture enquiry, he stated:
“…that we can distort,
then they become a fact,
when they are in fact,
necessarily not a fact.”