Mladen Stilinovic at Villa Romana (2010)
Tag Archives: economics
DEMOCRACIA
DEMOCRACIA, ‘Eat the rich/Kill the poor’ (2010)
Intervention on a hummer limo for transportation of collectors and art lovers during Armory Show 2010, New York. (Photos by Rodrigo Pereda)
Michael Asher
Michael Asher, ‘Think small’ (2010)
Asher’s piece is a reproduction of a 1959 print advertisement designed by Doyle, Dane, and Bernbach for the marketing of Volkswagen in the United States. “Think small” was the tagline in the ad and it became the concept of the campaign. Asher’s piece performs a kind of time travel, stretching back a half a century and replaying a historical campaign for our present consideration. When the “Think small” ads came out, America was firmly committed to a post-war economy perpetuated by the rapid growth of consumerism. Going against that grain, the “Think small” message encouraged investment in a reliable, affordable car rather than an oversized, flashy one. Visually and linguistically, the message of the campaign was to consume less, not more. Yet the ad’s critique of big consumerism performed well for corporate capitalism: many cars were sold, and the ad itself is credited with creating a sea change in the way advertising is created.
(the original ad – right-click and ‘view image’ for enlarging)
Michael Stevenson
‘The fountain of prosperity’ (2007) by Michael Stevenson
The Fountain of Prosperity (2007) is a reconstruction of the ‘Moniac’, a machine designed in the late 1940s by New Zealand economist Bill Phillips to illustrate the concept of monetary flow in national economies. A fixed volume of red-dyed water, representing money, is pumped through a system of transparent tubes and sluices into clear chambers representing factors such as ‘surplus balances’ and ‘International Monetary Funds’. Regarded as an extremely developed tool for analysing economic functions, 15 of these devices were built and shipped around the world. Stevenson discovered that one of the machines was acquired by the Central Bank of Guatemala in 1952, and has imagined what it might look like today. His replica is corroding and leaking, and the chamber marked ‘held balances’ is empty, suggesting that the economic model it represents is on the verge of collapse.
Read more about the project here.
Maria Eichhorn
Maria Eichhorn‘s exhibition ‘Das Geld der Kunsthalle Bern / Money at the Kunsthalle Bern’ (2000) resulted from her research into funding of the exhibition and her decision to devote the entire budget for her show to the renovation of the building. The entire museum was on show during this renovation and visitors could watch the process from up close, even in rooms that were normally hidden from view.
