Projects 2005

Capital (It Fails Us Now) is a group show exploring the notion of capital, taking point of departure along dual lines; on the one hand location, and on the other subjectivity; how capitalism affects our daily lives, our very structure of feelings and perceptions. Capital understood as an economic tool, as a measure of exchange and surplus, and as something at once regulated and regulating (by both state and market), as well as a producer of subjectivity (the commodification of everything).

The exhibition in Tallinn is the second half of a two-fold project, with the first part taking place at UKS in Oslo, Norway 8 Oct – 6 Nov 2005.

Participating artists:
Michael Blum, Andrea Creutz, Copenhagen Free University, Regina Dold, Maria Eichhorn, Katia Fouquet, Florian Gass, Stephan Geene, Ashley Hunt, Susan Kelly & Stephen Morton, Marietta Kesting, Oliver Ressler, Natascha Sadr Haghighian, Katya Sander, Fia Stina Sandlund, Jason Simon, What Is To Be Done?, Elin Wikström, Knut Åsdam


The exhibition focuses on the current moment in history, with its structural changes, and, arguably, crisis, within global capital, and look at the two specific locations as models, as machinery within the production and proliferation of capital. Partly, the Western European model of the welfare state is undergoing a massive structural change, if not deconstruction. This can also be seen in the refined versioning of the welfare state, the Nordic social democratic model of redistribution and equilibrium; a compromise between liberalism and socialism, but also a temporal territorial alliance between capital and labour that is now historical. This also in the case on the margins of the new Europe, with the rapid and massive deregulation of the post communist countries, where the former state capitalism is being transformed into a neoliberal, transnational market system. But how do these formations, or versionings, affect each other? What are the routes between them, and are they tending towards merger and secession? What are “new” economies, and what kinds of technologies of the self are they producing, and indeed, enforcing? The project is, then, to discuss these specific model of capital and (cultural) production and how we can visualize the current changes. We therefore propose to look at art production, not only as commodity production, but also as a means of visualizing and discussing complex mechanisms of subjectivities. As a place for imagining models for a post- or anti-commodified subject position. If Michel Foucault could write about the ’non-fascist life’, can we imagine the non-capitalistic subject? And what will this entail in terms of economic and social relations living within capitalism?

A book including artistic contributions and essays from Will Bradley, Katja Diefenbach, Stephan Geene, Brian Holmes, Trude Iversen, Oleg Kireev, Isabell Lorey, Gerald Raunig and Natascha Sadr Haghighian will be published by b_books in April 2006.

Curated by Simon Sheikh. Produced by NIFCA, Nordic Institute for Contemporary Art, in collaboration with Kunstihoone in Tallinn, Estonia, and UKS in Oslo, Norway. The project has been carried out within the framework of transform.eipcp.net and with the support of the Culture 2000 programme of the European Union.

europa.eu.int

This project has been funded with support from the European Commission. This publication [communication] reflects the views only of the author, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.

INFORMATION

Kunstihoone, Tallinn

For more information please contact:
Project coordinator Mitro Kaurinkoski at NIFCA,
mitro.kaurinkoski@nifca.org, tel. +358 9 686 43 105
or
Curator Anders Härm at Kunstihoone,
anders@kunstihoone.ee, tel. +372 6442 818.

Kunstihoone
Vabaduse väljak 6
Tallinn 10146, Estonia
www.kunstihoone.ee


UKS, Oslo

For more information please contact:
Simon Sheikh, curator, post@simonsheikh.net
or
Kjersti Solberg Monsen, Information and exhibition consultant
UKS - Unge Kunstneres Samfund
Young Artists Society
tlf: +47 22 19 50 50
fax: +47 22 19 50 54
k.monsen@uks.no

Unge Kunstneres Samfund
Lakkegata 55d
N-0187 Oslo, Norway
Tel. +47 22195050
www.uks.no


Image credit:
Michael Blum, video still from 'Wandering Marxwards',
video 19’ 23’’, 1999.
Courtesy of the artist.