Professor Watson Curates Art Exhibition "Transnational Capitalism Examined"
Communications Professor Mike Watson will curate a double solo exhibition of the Austrian artist Oliver Ressler, titled Transnational Capitalism Examined.
Professor Mike Watson
As the economic crisis lingers three sectors of transnational capital stand out as the most aggressive and prone to seek neo-fascist political arrangements in order to maximize profit: speculative financial capital, the military-industrial-security complex, and the extractive and energy sector. What all of these aspects have in common is their transcendence of national boundaries. Globalization, which once promised unbound freedoms has become a restrictive force as finance capitalism, punitive military actions and commodity extraction operate on a transnational level, unanswerable to individual political subjects or their governments. It is part of Oliver Ressler’s role as an artist to make visible things which are otherwise kept invisible, thereby opening the possibility for dialogue around political wrongdoing and strategies to challenge it.
Part One of the exhibition, Transnational Capitalism Examined: Dancing on Systemically Important Graves at Fondazione Pastificio Cerere brings together works from Ressler from the past 13 years. Ressler is an artist who approaches and presents the documentary form via an artistic outlook. Such an approach aims to concretize art’s critical capacity whilst exposing the effects of Transnational Capitalism.
Conversely, Transnational Capitalism Examined: Border as Method at The Gallery Apart examines the visible face of global capitalism as embodied in social unrest, economic collapse, undocumented migration and the influx of refugees from the war-zones into Europe. The exhibition takes its title from Sandro Mezzadra & Brett Neilson’s Border as Method, or the Multiplication of Labour (2013), which examines the proliferation of borders which has accompanied the advance of free market capitalism and globalization, highlighting a contradiction of transnational capitalism.
During the exhibition several collateral events will be hosted by Fondazione Pastificio Cerere and curated by Mike Watson: Art. Class. War, an event bringing together VJ’s and DJ’s to present audio, visual and performance works which aim to address the issues of social class and warfare within an art environment; Boundaries and Confines, two workshops around the theme of arts and media activism with students of local universities.
Professor Watson is an art theorist, critic and curator who is principally focused on the relation between art and politics. He holds a PhD in Philosophy from Goldsmiths College and has curated for Nomas Foundation and at both the 55th and 56th Venice Biennale.
Oliver Ressler (Knittelfeld, Austria, 1970) lives and works in Vienna and produces installations, projects in public space, and films on issues such as economics, democracy, global warming, forms of resistance and social alternatives.
Transnational Capitalism Examined: Dancing on Systemically Important Graves at Fondazione Pastificio Cerere opens on Tuesday, September 27th 2016, 7.00 pm.
Transnational Capitalism Examined: Border as Method at The Gallery Apart opens on Wednesday, September 28th 2016, 7.00 pm .
Both exhibitions will be open to the public until November 26th, 2016.
