Welcome Back Ye Annunaki!

Welcome Back Ye Annunaki

Dates: November 16–December 21, 2012

Opening Reception: Friday, November 16, 6 p.m.
Welcome Potluck hosted by Mary-Anne McTrowe
Sound performance by s*
Job Interviews by Cindy Baker & Megan Morman

Welcome Back Ye Annunaki was a showcase of works answering the question How would you host an ancient alien? The artists in the exhibition responded to an international call for proposals inspired by Zecharia Sitchin’s Earth Chronicles, a book detailing how the human species originated from extraterrestrial beings. These distant relatives were scheduled to return to the earth in December 2012.

Participating artists proposed a variety of convivial acts to welcome Annunaki families from the planet Nibiru upon their return visit to earth after a 3,600-year orbit. The projects took a variety of forms, from an intergalactic calling card to a bed away from home, collegial gestures of kindness that revealed the customs that we embrace as human citizens of earth.

Welcome Back Ye Annunaki provided a constructive take on Sitchin’s mythology, one of the many associated with the year 2012.

Welcome Potluck
In celebration of the anticipated return of the Annunaki, Mary-Anne McTrowe hosted a potluck meal at Open Space on Friday, November 16, at 6 p.m. Please prepare a dish to share with everyone.

Sound Performance
IO + INVOCATION. Before the potluck, a breath, of sound, of meditation, in the spirit of alien ancestors: sound performed with thoughtful gratitude, as we welcome those and that which may come. Acoustic-electronic sound meditation performed live by s* of offworld sonic nexus IO SOUND.

IO + TRANSMISSION. Welcoming the Annunaki with exoteric sound: providing the aural accompaniment for a possible alien arrival. Acoustic-electronic sonics performed live by s* of interstellar label IO SOUND.

Job Interviews
Cindy Baker & Megan Morman conducted interviews for their home-based business BenBen Brothel: a bed away from home.

Welcome Back Ye Annunaki Participating Artists:
Cindy Baker & Megan Morman (Lethbridge, AB),
Katie Bethune-Leamen (Toronto, ON),
Marlaina Buch & Ross Macaulay (Kamloops, BC),
Roy Green (Victoria, BC),
Robert Gallup & Josh Kopel (Seattle, WA),
Karen Hibbard (Victoria, BC),
Kruno Jost (Cakovec, CRO),
Serena Kataoka (Peterborough, ON),
Robin Kirkpatrick (Victoria, BC),
Kegan McFadden (Winnipeg, MN),
Mary-Anne McTrowe (Lethbridge, AB),
Ella Morton (Vancouver, BC),
Ryan Park (Toronto, ON),
s* (offworld),
Shawn Shepherd (Victoria, BC),
Sherry Tompalski (Ottawa, ON),
Rhonda Usipiuk (Victoria, BC),
Christine Walde (Victoria, BC).

Organized by Ted Hiebert and Doug Jarvis, members of the artist collective Noxious Sector.

Images from the exhibition

Installation view

Ella Morton, Intergalactic Calling Card

Karen Hibbard, Ready for Landing

Sherry Tompalski

*s, Live performance

Kruno Jost, Video-still

Kegan McFadden, from out backyard to your front

Katie Bethune-Leamen, ALL ONE

Ryan Park, Subletting my apartment

Marlaina Buch & Ross Macaulay, COME WELL

Christine Walde, En D'Or: A Library for the Annunaki

Cindy Baker & Megan Morman, BenBen Brothel - A bed away from home

Mary-Anne McTrowe, Welcome Back Ye Annunaki Potluck

Serena Kataoka, Live stream of sensory deprevation chamber

Robin Kirkpatrick, Welcoming (from the grave) thank you note from Albert to the Annunaki

Rhonda Usipiuk, Paper Peace Garden(s)

Josh Koppel & Robert Gallup, Artifact -Writing machine

Shawn Shepherd, Lunch Tablet

Opening reception

Description of project from call for proposals
There is a curious version of the human story that comes from the pseudo-archeologist Zecharia Sitchin, who claims that humanity is a product of alien intervention, genetically engineered by a race called the Annunaki. Sitchin claims that the story of the Annunaki is engraved on the clay tablets of the ancient Sumerian people, along with details of the planet they come from, called Nibiru or Planet X. According to Sumerian myth, Nibiru is on a long elliptical orbit that brings it into proximity with our solar system only once every 3,600 years. If the Sumerian myths prove correct, the winter solstice of 2012 may mark the return of the Annunaki as Nibiru re-enters proximity to the Earth. The science and the story may be contested, but we might nonetheless wonder what it might mean if these gods of ancient times returned to a world they helped to create—even if such a story exists only in our imaginations.

Welcome Back Ye Annunaki invites gestures of hospitality: host families willing to open their homes, hearts, and imaginations, to guests from another world. One might think of an ancient alien as an imaginary friend waiting to be made, an ethereal companion to whom one might extend a spirit of Earthly generosity and community. The idea of hosting ancient aliens is—in this way—a questioning of our own personal space, speculating on what it means to make it accessible to others, and in so doing expose us to a larger imaginary community. This act of hospitality is meant as a way to reveal to us, and our own community, the biases and assumptions that we hold close to our heads and hearts, as our ways of being in the world. In the spirit of cultural exchange, this exhibition seeks to bring together communities—real and imaginary—in a celebration of home and Earthly hospitality.

About Noxious Sector
Ted Hiebert and Doug Jarvis collaborate as part of Noxious Sector Arts Collective, a formalized forum for informal inquiry. Dedicated to the exploration of questions of the imaginative, the paranormal and the absurd, Noxious Sector attempts to redefine the meaning of artistic possibility through extended propositions that challenge consensual norms while also provoking stimulating forums for dialogue and discourse.

Welcome Back Ye Annunaki was part of the HomeStay project. Please visit the following links for more information:

http://www.openspace.ca/homestay
http://www.noxioussector.net/annunaki.php

Welcome Back Ye Annunaki

An Introduction by Ted Hiebert

There is a version of the human story that has us evolved from apes and monkeys, and another that has us immaculately created from miraculous roots. While science and religion vie for attention on the origin debate, the fact of the matter is that we are nevertheless, in some way, here at the moment. And though we might be nevertheless here at the moment, this is not in any way to deny the curiosity of how we might have gotten here in the first place. Science and religion have answers—curiosity has none.

Curiosity, however, has options—and science and religion are only two of what promises to be many more versions and iterations of the story.

Another such iteration comes from the pseudo-archeologist, Zecharia Sitchin. According to Sitchin, the human race is a product of alien intervention, genetically engineered by a race called the Annunaki to serve as slaves—part early hominid, part extraterrestrial. Further, Sitchin believes that many, if not most, versions of early human mythology and religion tell this same story—whether Greek or Egyptian, Mayan or Chinese—the tale of visitors from the heavens who came to earth as gods, creating culture and civilization more than 6,000 years ago. These various instances of the story have—according to Sitchin—a common root in the mythologies of ancient Sumeria.

This may be more than simply a story however, for the Sumerians left not only records of the history, but cosmological charts and diagrams detailing where the Annunaki came from. Early tablets, for instance, show diagrams of the solar system with the sun at its centre (long before the sun was acknowledged as the center of the western cosmos). Interestingly however, these diagrams also show a tenth planet—a planet the Sumerians called Nibiru, home of the Annunaki.

While there is little acceptance of these stories by western science, there are nonetheless anomalies that lend credence to at least the plausibility of the theory—the most convincing of which is probably the orbital wobble of Neptune and Venus, which many physicists feel points to the presence of another planetary body exerting a gravitational pull at the fringes of our solar system. As the legend goes, the planet Nibiru is on a long elliptical orbit that brings it into proximity with our solar system only once every 3,600 years. Each time this happens, the gravitational balance of the solar system is disturbed, causing floods, earthquakes or worse. In fact, some believers go as far as to speculate that the return of Nibiru may be the cause of the apocalyptic visions of earth change predicted by the Mayans for December 21, 2012. This date, according to Mayan mythology, will mark the end of the fifth long cycle—or fifth world—an end-time prophecy that has been popularized by numerous new-age supporters, prophets, advocats and visionaries who tell of pole-shifts, devastating climate change, planetary alignment, mass enlightenment, alien invasion and other marvels of scientific and imaginative wonder.

Indeed, if the Sumerian myths prove correct, the winter solstice of 2012 may mark both the Mayan end of times and the return of the Annunaki, as their planet re-enters proximity to our own. The science and the story may be contested—but won't the scientist's feel stupid if this time they got it wrong. And perhaps instead of lamenting or applauding the end of times as we know them, we might imagine what it might mean for these gods of ancient times to return to a world they helped to create and a people who—at least in part—have continued to in some way tell their story.