Political Decadence

The installation consists of a group of marching drums bearing hand painted fragments of political and diplomatic language: Abstract Persuasion, Accidental Amplifiers, Political Decadence, Prelude to Intervention, Charm Offensive, Systematic Pauses, Natural Dynamics, Qualified Speakers, and Tonal Accuracy. Drawn from the vocabularies of governance, military strategy, diplomacy, acoustics, and public communication, these phrases construct unstable metaphors between sound and authority, protest and orchestration, audibility and control. Oscillating between bureaucratic terminology and poetic abstraction, the titles remind how political power operates not only through ideology and spectacle, but equally through rhythm, amplification, repetition, and silence.

Traditionally associated with military processions, patriotic ceremonies, and collective mobilisation, the marching drum functions here as both sculptural object and ideological instrument. It is simultaneously a carrier of rhythm and a mechanism of synchronisation: an object historically used to coordinate bodies in public space, regulate movement, and produce collective affect. By isolating and fragmenting these rhetorical expressions, Cibic transforms the drums into suspended linguistic devices in which political speech is detached from its original function and exposed as choreography, cadence, and tonal management.

The worn drumheads bear traces of earlier performances in which hymns and marches discovered in the League of Nations archive were reactivated by groups of female drummers. These visible marks of use position the installation between sculpture and aftermath, suggesting both the exhaustion and persistence of political spectacle. Across the work, sound emerges as a form of soft power: a mechanism through which states organize emotion, manufacture consensus, and continually rehearse their authority.