The Cargo Cults of the south-pacific:

Local tribes of Vanuatu started building giant airplanes from wood, carving headphones and radios from bamboo and awaited the messianic serviceman John Frum. Their rituals including the non militant army TAU- Tanna Army USA, marching with wooden rifles, should attract planes to the island. Carrying godlike cargo, bringing happiness and prosperity over its people. “Rituals” and devices of US soldiers were copied by these tribes, as the soldiers obviously got hold of supplies, dropped from planes without actually working. The more naive will laugh about these imitations. But did the US soldiers truly understand their technology, their big agenda? 

Surprisingly the local performers of the Cargo Cults succeeded: By remaking western technology with bamboo, by re-enacting western rituals they attracted actual planes full of tourists and anthropologists. People got interested in the exotic parades using western imagery. The John Frum Movement (“John from Merica”) suddenly had an audience, soon bringing actual stuff (cargo) to the island. The cargo shaman once said: You build your plane too and wait in faith. the waiting is the hardest part. According to some shamans the planes awaited will also bring weapons to throw off colonialist oppressors. The cargo cults are strange mockups of imperialism, at the same time keeping old traditions. But is the cult for real or just performance? It does not matter, no difference, it is about the act. The Tale of the Cargo ringing true on so many levels.

The cult of the cargo is our world exactly: We perform meaningless routines we call work, in hope for future cargo. With a technology that could navigate us to the moon, we write LMAO. The western world itself is a giant cult of imitating things that somehow work: dressing in suits, using buzzword-vocabulary, mimicing old forms of art. who knows why.. The longing for godlike goodies on the horizon, the usage of things we don´t understand: a big parable of desire. The waiting, the waiting is the hardest part! Our western world is itself transformed in branding myth & mimesis.

Supercargo is ritual appropriation + subversive mimickry