Hoisted (South Bank)

The latest version of Inkahoots’ Hoisted flew high on the side of QPAC at South Bank Parklands, as part of MoB’s Brisbane Art & Design (BAD) Festival.

Hoisted is a large-scale projected interactive intervention honouring the installation site’s native flora and fauna, and exploring the recognition of sovereignty for the natural world.

Participants celebrated the plants and animals of South Bank and the Brisbane River by creating flags with their phones on our Hoisted flag building app, then watched them fly 20 meters high overlooking the city.

In collaboration with the local community and scientists, Inkahoots identifies and researches a curated list of local flora and fauna related to the installation site. These are presented on the Hoisted web-app with unique visual assets and information enabling users to create a flag based on their chosen species. The user-generated flags are then projected live onsite, and are also collected and archived on the website.

Inkahoots has developed a critical theoretical manoeuvre we’re calling vexillografting. If vexillography is the established practice of flag design, vexillografting is the strategic transfer of meaning using the persuasive symbolic power of flags to champion neglected yet fundamental priorities.

Can this splicing of meaning through the process of inventing flags for native fauna and flora help change the way we value the natural world, and our relationship to it?

For more about the ideas behind the work go here.