Output details
34 - Art and Design: History, Practice and Theory
London Metropolitan University
'Future Monument ' Live performance, sculpture and series of silk screen prints
Based on a series of collages made from images of mega yachts, the Future
Monument by collaborative artists Pil and Galia Kollectiv looks at the possibility
of taking late capitalism more seriously as an ideology than it takes itself . The project asks whether the private display of wealth and power represented by the yacht can be appropriated for a new language of public sculpture.
The choreographed live performance of the construction of the large
scale monument was scripted to a proposed capitalist manifesto and took
place in a public square in Herzliya, Israel. It aimed to articulate the ideology
latent in capitalism’s claims to a neutral manifestation of human nature.
Capitalism doesn’t present itself as an ideology but as the consequence,
however, undesirable, of inevitable economic and social realities. By writing a manifesto, erecting monuments and performing propaganda plays for
capitalism, the project’s objective is to force a self-recognition within capitalism
of its own ideology. Power and politics are addressed not from without, but
rather, assuming the current deadlock of no alternatives, from within. Applying
a strategy of overidentification, this work does not negate capitalism, merely
reflects its claims back at it in such a way as to undermine self-professed
neutrality.
The Future Monument project was developed through reading seminars taking
place at Goldsmiths College, as part of a research strand headed by Pil and
Galia Kollectiv on irony and overidentification within the ‘Political Currency of
Art’ research group. This research has produced a series of silk screen collage
prints, a sculpture commissioned by Essex Council and a live performance
commissioned by the Herzliya Biennale. The capitalist manifesto was
subsequently performed as part of ‘Epic Sea Battle at Night: A Revolutionary
Play Permeated with the Economic Thinking of Milton Friedman’ commissioned
by RADAR, Loughborough and Bookworks.
