[spectre] Exhibition announcement: Forays. Systems of Self-Interest – Mechanisms of Looting | 8 March, 19.00

[Open Space]

*° **Forays. Systems of Self-Interest – Mechanisms of Looting* | 9 March -
7 April 2012



Opening: 8 March, 19:00 pm



Project curator: Sabine Winkler



Participating artists:



Lara Baladi

          Jan Peter Hammer

Maryam Jafri

Lina Khatib

Candida TV/D Media

Joanne Richardson and David Rych

* *

The project deals with different systems of exploitation and its
consequences. Within the dramatic occurrences of the last years, there was
one obvious motif, forming the basis of the financial crisis as well as the
basis of the riots in the countries of the Arabic-Spring: Exploitation and
systems of self-interest are mechanisms of looting, which occurs as
neoliberalism disguised as democracy or naked as dictatorial system. The
possibilities of exploitation are unlimited. Loss of reality characterizes
the stakeholders of both systems. The loot-mechanisms of the financial
systems are inscrutable in their abstract complexity and virtuality, the
exploitation systems of totalitarian governed countries define the everyday
life struggle of survival of the population. Political, economical and
judicial conditions of forays are installed to systematize methods of
self-interest and to strengthen elitist power systems.



What is now then the difference between these two exploitation systems?
That the people in Europe have not yet fought the ruthless methods of the
finance markets? The saving of the banking-institutions and the big
concerns will destroy more and more the social systems, as everybody
(except the rich) will have to pay for the gambling debts of the
financial-markets-speculators in the following years. Exploitation is a
means to eliminate the social state: Public money that is supposed to be
spent for the communality is shifted to banking institutions and big
concerns. Thievery of the commons, tax privileges of the rich and methods
of self-interest, which are sold as competence of competition do not only
involve public fields, but also affect increasingly private zones. The
looters at the financial-markets still feel secure and protected within the
neoliberal system and its same old representatives. Corruption has a long
tradition and is taken for granted as a method of enrichment, inasmuch it
is increasingly perceived as a legalized tactic for succeeding
economically.



In the Arabic countries of revolution the autocrats enriched themselves by
public and by governmental institutionalized methods of looting,
establishing systems of corruption, regarding all social classes.
Structures for systemic and personal enrichment methods were installed by
the colonial policy, exploitation was and is practised by elitist gangs.
Authoritarian and hierarchic systems, which are operating self-interestedly
in clans, feudal or Mafia-like gangs, disregarding necessities of life,
rights, social conditions, etc., are producing every day disasters and lack
of perspectives, especially for the young people. The governmental father
figures have served their time; patriarchal systems of control are forced
back by the desire of self-determination and the right to say. At the
moment, some of the dictatorial looters are losing their power positions
and new possibilities for political orders can be developed.



The worst is coming to the worst, when territorial claims of both
exploitation systems coincide, when military interventions are whitewashed
on the pretext of humanitarian aid, or when the ventures of the financial
markets force up the prices of food, causing mass starvation in political
and economical instable countries.



What are the systemic overlapping and differences in this two systems of
loot-generation? In which way mechanisms of exploitation are legitimized
and masked, which pseudo-arguments are appearing again and again in this
context and which counter-mechanisms could stop this generation of loot?

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*Artist info:*

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*Lara Baladi*

*Hope (Amal)*, 2008/09

Slide- and sound installation, booklets



“About 40% of the buildings in Cairo consists of the so call 'ashwa'iyat'
("random things") commonly translated as informal housebuilding in this
context. These illegal constructed slums are built up of bricks and
concrete, often without windows and municipal infrastructure.” (Lara Baldi)
Informal housebuilding can be regarded as a result of political
loot-generation and corruption. Formal housebuilding is a traditional
object of corrupt linking-ups between construction companies and political
elites. Thousands of buildings in Cairo are empty, as a bigger part of the
population cannot afford these expensive apartments. Informal housebuilding
is one of the consequences of informal working conditions or unemployment,
which is in turn a product of enrichment procedures. The
*aswa'iyat*quarters are improvisational living space but nevertheless
a social
environment, which can be organised in different ways. Asef Bayat and Eric
Denis allude to the social and economical aspect of the *aswa'iyat*, which
supply its inhabitants with living space, food, schools, hospitals and
hope.<#_ftn1>



Lara Baladi (born in Beirut, Lebanon) lives and works in Cairo.



*Jan Peter Hammer*

*The Anarchist Banker*, 2010

HD video installation, 30 min



Jan Peter Hammer refers to a short novel of the same name by Fernando
Pessoa. Jan Peter Hammer stages Pessoa's dialogue between a banker and a
secretary as an interview between the banker Arthur Ashenking and the TV
moderator Dave Hall. The name of the banker is a loosely reference to Artur
Alves dos Reis, which inspired Pessoa for his short novel. Artur Alves dos
Reis was a big cheater, falsifying any kind of documents and money on a
grand scale, and was therefore responsible for the devaluation of the
Portuguese escudo, resulting in an economic and political crisis of the
first Portuguese republic, followed by twenty years of fascistic
dictatorship. In his staging, Jan Peter Hammer adapts the original dialogue
for showing neoliberal practices of the financial markets resulting in the
current crisis. Arthur Ashenking leads through the genealogy of
neoliberalism, from the ideal of self-determination of the individual up to
the duty of self-optimisation in economic and emotional regards. Jan Peter
Hammer shows these repetitive lines of argumentation, defending rational
egoism and audacious individualism. The banker justifies pure materialism
and self-interest, his own aiming for personal profit with the notion
freedom. A traditional way of pseudo-argumentation, not only for
legitimating and legalising exploitation mechanisms of looting, but also
promoting it as a positive way of life.

* *

Jan Peter Hammer* *was born in Kirchheim unter Teck in Germany and lives
and works in Berlin.



*Maryam Jafri *

*Siege of Khartoum, 1884*, 2006

A1 photo-collage posters



Maryam Jafri combines photos of the fall of Saddam Hussein, people
demolishing his statue, his arrest, images that have become icons of the
Iraq War, with articles of *The* *New York Times, The Times* and *The Daily
Telegraph*. Some of the articles are from the end of the 19th century, the
height of the British Empire extended to articles of the year 2006.
Journalistic texts from Winston Churchill about the Mahdists riots in Sudan
(1898), about the British efforts to suppress the Mau Mau riots in Kenya
(1950ies), anonymous reports from American journalists about the Vietnam
War (1960ies), about the fights at the Philippines (1920ies) or in Panama
(1990ies). *Siege of Khartoum,1884* stands for the resistance of the
Mahdists against the British-Egyptian government in Sudan, and can be taken
as a metaphor of resistance against oppression. Maryam Jafri explores
references between current and historical looting-wars, revealing
traditional and repetitive methods of looting as well as techniques of
reporting about it.



Maryam Jafri* *was born in Karachi and lives and works in Copenhagen and
New York.


*Lina Khatib** *

*Fallin' Dictators*, 2011

Video installation



Lina Khatib shows in her video a series of photographs of advertising
posters of the fallen long-run dictators of the North-African countries.
The title of the work refers to the double significance of the word *fall*,
overthrow and autumn. Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, Muhammad Hosni Sayyid
Mubarak, Muammar Gaddafi and Bashar al-Assad are smiling faithfully from
the posters, accompanied by advertising slogans like "wherever you go, you
will bring happiness and beauty" (Gaddafi poster) or "for democracy and
stability" (Mubarak poster). The self-staging of the dictators as trustable
heads of government reveals the cynicism of their omnipotence-fantasies and
their lack of reality. The masters of the ruthless loot-generation are
staging themselves as patriarchal father-figures, men of the world, problem
resolvers and so on, hiding systems of exploitation, oppression and
violence behind gestures and poses.

* *

Lina Khatib* *was born in Lebanon and is currently California based.



*Candida TV/D Media*

*Made in Italy*, 2006

Video, 25 min


Candida TV/D Media oppose in their video 16.000 Italian companies, that
have displaced their production facility to the low-wage-country Romania,
to two million Romanian migrants living in Italy. The film shows different,
often controversial perceptions and positions: Italian businessmen, trade
unionists, local workers and migrants are reporting about their experiences
and life-conditions. Concerns and trusts are displacing their production
facilities for saving costs by not paying taxes and by paying low wages to
the employees. Tax exemption of the rich is a result of neoliberal economic
policy and one of the main reasons for the financial crises resulting in
austerity packages. Loot is generated twice, by the exploitation of cheap,
often migrant workers and by fiscal privileges. Candida TV/D Media explore
these interdependencies of delocalisation.

* *

Candida TV (Italy), D Media (Romania): Video activist collectives
(Francesca Bria, Tora Krogh, Cristina Petrucci, Joanne Richardson)



*Joanne Richardson and David Rych** *

*Red Tours*, 2010

Video, 48 min



Joanne Richardson and David Rych deal with transformation processes of
communism into capitalism and the often unreflected systemic change of
ideologies. *Red Tours* was shot in Budapest, Prague, Vilnius and Berlin,
in theme parks, ghost trains, and experience-museums, which are now
defining the history, interpretation and perception of the Soviet Union.
Recent history has become an object of collective repression, reduced to a
museal and touristic representation in zones of adventure. Communist
history was pathologized for creating free spaces for neoliberal systems,
not questioning its practices. This ideological matrix, which reduces all
to economic-processes, the market and consumption, despoils ideal systems,
by destroying dreams, history, memory, imagination etc. All ideological
systems are eager for these imaginary systems, intervening and controlling
private zones. Occupation occurs after conquest.

* *

Joanne Richardson* *was born in Bucharest and lives and works in Berlin.

David Rych was born in Innsbruck and lives and works in Berlin.



*      **
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*supported by*:

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BM:UKK

MA 7 - Interkulturelle und Internationale Aktivitäten

Arbeiterkammer Wien

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