Objects of Scorn* — Propagate Cooperative

Objects of Scorn

55 July, 2025 - 31 August 2025 | The Narthex Gallery | 6400 S Kimbark | Chicago, IL, USA

Joseph J Greer I Jesse Bond
Frans Nybacka I Larence M.

Alex Both I Chris Vaiu I NI KA
Max Svitlo & Salt Salome

Kai Philip Trausenegger

“On May 1st, they put up a small flag and lots and lots of children gathered. On the 5th, the children agreed on a place to meet on the 6th. Somewhere between dozens to as many as one hundred children met at the agreed time. Among them, about twenty or thirty children were selected based on their fighting ability. Then they fought taking care not to injure one another” (Shinmi 1732)

Industrail Frogs, 2025
50" x 44", Oil on Linen
Frans Nybacka

Crab Trap, 2025
11”x 7”x5”, Horseshoe crab carapice, antique umpire mask
Joseph J Greer

𝘜𝘯𝘵𝘪𝘵𝘭𝘦𝘥 (𝘌𝘥𝘥𝘺, 𝘍𝘭𝘢𝘱𝘫𝘢𝘤𝘬, 𝘎𝘳𝘪𝘮𝘮), ND
20” x 16”, Acrylic, inkjet prints, and oil pastel on canvas
Lawrence M.

𝘒𝘢𝘵𝘯𝘪𝘴𝘴 𝘌𝘷𝘦𝘳𝘥𝘦𝘦𝘯, 2025
8” x 7” x 7, Glass, inkjet print, leaves
Jesse Bond

In 1855, a group of [Japanese] children gathered to play an ordinary war game, but in this game the children split into two sides, one American and the other Japanese. Each side had a leader, the Japanese side led by a twelve-year-old and the American side by a fourteen-year-old. The fourteen-year-old, being older, was considered the stronger, and for that reason alone he was able to draw ten new members to his side from the enemy. The children gathered bamboo rods and slung them about wildly[,] pretending to be in the heat of a battle. That day the American side claimed victory. The next day the children gathered to play again. The leader of the Japanese side, however, was late. When he arrived, he had brought with him bamboo rods that had been whittled down to sharp points. The Japanese leader suddenly thrust one into the boy who was playing the leader of the Americans, and the boy immediately fell to the ground in pain. People from the neighborhood and the fallen boy’s parents came to his aid, but the wound proved fatal.

𝘈𝘶𝘹𝘪𝘭𝘪𝘢𝘳𝘺 𝘓𝘪𝘨𝘩𝘵𝘴, 2023
8” x 7” x 7, 10 minutes 44 seconds
Digital Video
Kai Philip Trausenegger

We are Worker Ants, 2023
19 ¾ x 25 ½ in, Pastel on Paper
Chris Viau

𝘚𝘺𝘯𝘶𝘮𝘦𝘳𝘶, 2024

26 minutes 27 Seconds, Digital Video
Max Svitlo & Anna Zatsarinna (Salt Salome)

[Video Link]

The angry parents took the matter to court. The court ruled in favor of the young boy who had killed the American leader. The court believed that he had done the proper thing and had defended his country by defeating the enemy: America. As a reward he was given a lifetime stipend and his followers were commended for their behavior. (Kondō Juhaku, ed., Kinsei fūbun-mimi no aka [Tokyo: Seiabō, 1972], 163; quoted in Minami 1989: 26–27)

@s𝘢𝘭𝘢𝘩𝘢𝘭𝘣𝘭𝘸𝘪 𝘯𝘢𝘵𝘶𝘳𝘦𝘱𝘰𝘭𝘪𝘴 𝘨𝘰𝘥𝘴𝘤𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯, 2024
7” x 5”, Oil on Panel
Alex Both

Pluto, 2023
27” x 27”, Steel
NI KA

How does a child imagine catastrophe—or as Adam Greenfield coins “The Long Emergency”? Whispers and cries of war assert themselves regularly in the games of youth, appearing in their drawings, their inventions: forts built for battle, sticks and swords, rocks and plastic guns. For many young ones, there is little fiction to the conflicts that enter into their play, arms taken up, as so many before, rocks from slingshots hit tanks, child, come of age now. Fandom now dominates the minds of the “adult youth” as an escape from the contemporary moment. The super heroes must save the day, as there aren’t many others who seem to have the time. Rather than a picture of ‘the girl back home’ the modern European warfighter brings with him not an image of his wife, but of his waifu.

The materiality of war has shifted. No longer confined to trenches or frontlines, today's wars are waged through screens, drones, data. Servers are as vulnerable as soldiers. The battlefield now includes satellite feeds, information leaks (on warethunder forums), disinformation campaigns. A child with a tablet may see more real-time footage of conflict than a soldier in the field. The tools of play and the tools of ruin share the same material signature.

Media saturates the senses—war is livestreamed, gamified, retweeted. The spectacle of suffering becomes just another scroll. Against this overwhelming present, fandom emerges as an escape for the adult youth, caught between the harshness of reality and the worlds of fantasy.

Cybersecurity is no longer a specialist concern but a daily condition of life. The borders between the personal and political, between home and battlefield, are transgressed with every data breach, every algorithmic echo. Children grow up not just under the threat of bombs, but under the quiet violence of surveillance, censorship, and digital manipulation.

Imagination knows no bounds. And for young people living in, around, and bearing witness to war—both physical and virtual—it is no different. They inherit a world where catastrophe is ambient, emergencies are chronic, and play is not innocent, but rehearsed.

Æcumen, containing at once both Ecumen (from the greek Oikoumenikós) meaning the whole inhabited world, and used today to refer to efforts to find unity between religious sects, and Acumen, referring to a quickness of perception or discernment; penetration of mind; the faculty of nice discrimination. Æcumen is a site specific installation and exhibition series in the nooks and crannies of Chicago First Church.

Propagate Cooperative and the arts program at Chicago First Church are pleased to present the fifth installment of Æcumen, Objects of scorn with Kai Trausenegger, Joseph J Greer, Jesse Bond, Frans Nybacka, Alex Both, Chris Viau, Max Svitlo, Salt Salome (Anna Zatsarinna), NI KA and Lawrence M.

This exhibition was curated by Savannah Bell and Zolt Brown-Dunn