Derivatives, new art financial visions
La Casa Encendida, Madrid / June 27th-September 3rd 2006. Curated by Mar Canet, Jesús Rodríguez and Daniel Beunza.
Hidden behind technical concepts like “Volatility”, “liquidity” or “market efficiency”, traders, brokers and analysts exercise an obscure, powerful influence over the man in the street. Contemporary art, however, has rarely explored the role played by the stock markets in today’s society. This oversight is surprising, because contemporary art encourages a critical contemplation of society and technology. Over the last decade, following the programmatic vision of Walter Benjamin, Marcel Duchamp and Andy Warhol, artists have explored new media with Net.art, climate change and the new world order created after September 11. Curiously, they have left out a central player in society and economy: the financial markets. The objective of this exhibition is to address this shortcoming with an artistic exploration and critical analysis of financial markets.
The exhibition is grouped into three conceptual blocks. The first of these, which is called re-presentation, reaches beyond the borders of financial representation to examine non-financial subjects. The second block, which is called re-vision, proposes new artistic perspectives on financial markets. The last one is called "re-thinking", and it brings together a variety of criticisms of the capital markets.
RE-PRESENTATION
One effective strategy employed by artists when tackling finance is de-contextualization. The first two installations in the exhibition use financial representations to explore non-financial subjects.
Despondency Index
Natalie Jeremijenko and the Bureau of Inverse Technology
Despondency Index offers a graph that combines a financial share price indicator and the levels of social despondency. The idea, produced by Natalie Jeremijenko and the Bureau of Inverse Technology, superimposes the suicide rate in San Francisco, from 1996-2000, on top of the Dow Jones index.
Web Issue Ticker
Richard Rogers and Govcom.org
Web Issue Ticker, by Richard Rogers and Govcom.org, is an interactive projection that re-uses financial ticker technology for the benefit of political activism. Instead of showing the evolution of share prices, the Issue Ticker shows the evolution of a variety of social problems.
RE-VISION
A second group of installations shows the different ways in which artists have understood stock markets. What do artists see when they look at the capital markets?
Making of Black shoals
Lise Autogena and Joshua Portway
Lise Autogena and Joshua Portway’s work Black Shoals, Stock Market Planetarium is a video installation of how the original piece was done.
In the original piece, Autogena and Portway situated the financial universe of stock markets in the mysterious context of a planetarium.
Open Outcry
Ben Rubin
With Open Outcry, the New York artist Ben Rubin proposes a sound installation that evokes the trading pits of the New York commodities exchange. The work intersperses the sounds of orders with interviews with brokers about their profession, their experience of working at the market and about surviving the September 11 tragedy.
Ecosystm
John Klima
Ecosystm, , by John Klima, is a real-time representation of global currency volatility fluctuations, and leading global market indexes.
Ecosystm consists of flocks of insect-like “birds” whose flight follows the ups and downs of the stocks in real time.
NASDAQ Voices
Fabio Cifariello Ciardi
NASDAQ Voices is an audio-visual installations based on the sonification of real time trading data from the NASDAQ Stock Market. The installation uses real-time data accessible through on-line resources to generate dynamic sonic patterns by means of mapping algorithms.
RE-THINKING
Finally, a last section consisting of three works directly questioning the economic model of financial markets.
They Rule
Josh On
They Rule reveals the power network linking together the directors of America’s largest businesses and universities. This piece by Josh On displays these connections by means of relational maps.
Google Will Eat Itself (GWEI)
Lizvix and Hans Bernhard, Alessandro Ludovico and Paolo Cirio
The Viennese group Ubermorgen.com present Google Will Eat Itself (GWEI). In this piece, the artists take a critical approach to the information monopolies and reflect on the nature of financial bubbles. GWEI is shown to the public as a series of diagrams that reveals the radical way this piece works.
On Translation: The Bank
Antoni Muntadas
In On Translation: The Bank, Spanish artist Antoni Muntadas explores financial currents resulting from globalization and the fragility of the value of money.
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More information:
Photos of the exhibition (Flickr account)
Catalogue of the exhibition (pdf version)
