The Revenge of the Crystal, 2012
Single-channel video, 25 min.
By Fieldwork/Nis Rømer & Lise Tovesdatter Skou
Exhibited at:
Extreme Crafts Freies Museum Berlin 2012
It’s the political economy, studpid 2013-2016 at: DAAP Galleries, Cincinnati, US; NeMe, Cyprus; WHW and Nova Gallery, Zagreb, Serbia; Gallery 404, Chicago, US; Centre for Cultural Decontamination, Beograd; Pori Art Museum, FI
The Revenge of the Crystal, is a five-part fictional narrative set in the aftermath of the present financial collapse. It is a moment in the near future when the failing global monetary system has destroyed almost every institution, and the decay of society has become a habit where a few alternative visions exists. The short film depicts the aftermath of a revolution in which a slamm collective of people form a fragile commune in a garden.
We see them learning the basic skills of survival and ways of living together. Step by step they fight to stay alive, attempting to do so without sacrificing their intellect or sense of solidarity. While focusing on the complexities of organizing a world that now resembles Girgio Agamben’s notion of ‘bare life’. Skou and Rømer’s carefully scripted piece manages to address underlying issues of politics, philosophy, and aesthetics that are all too relevant to our present-day circumstances of unrelenting economic crisis authoritarian drift, and rapidly failing states.
Script: Gritt Uldall-Jessen, Nis Rømer and Lise Tovesdatter Skou.
Performers: Maria Gersby, Marie Andersson, Pil Josefine Cecilie Nielsen, Rosa, Sand Michelsen, Sebastian Hjort Sørensen and Nis Rømer and Lise Skou
Director: Gritt Uldall-Jessen
[About Field Work]
Field Work was formed in 2006 by Lise Tovesdatter Skou and Nis Rømer.
Amongst the many relations defining human existence the individual and collective relation to the environment and our livelihoods are of the most essential. Cultivation, elaboration and even destruction of our surroundings are defining our culture and a central tool of power. Field Work aims to investigate those relations by engaging directly with urban and rural landscapes, and reflect on contemporary perception and uses of it. We aim to re-evaluate our ways of action and advocate social and political change while questioning what we take for granted in contemporary capitalism and how it shapes our everyday and surroundings. We wish to emphasize other realities of lifestyles and world views and possibilities of a life that go beyond the purely economic globalization.
It’s the political economy, stupid
– The Global Financial Crisis in Art and Thory, 2013
Ed. by Gregory Sholette & Oliver Ressler
Published in conjunction to the exhibition It’s the Political Economy, Stupid
The book brings together internationally acclaimed artists and thinkers, including Slavoj Žižek, David Graeber, Judith Butler and Brian Holmes, to focus on the current economic crisis in a sustained and critical manner.
In sympathy with the subject matter, the book features powerful original artwork for the cover, and an internal design theme based on the movements of Goldman Sachs stock market values by activist designer Noel Douglas. What emerges is a powerful critique of the current capitalist crisis through an analytical and theoretical response and an aesthetic-cultural rejoinder. By combining artistic responses with the analysis of leading radical theorists, the book expands the boundaries of critique beyond the usual discourse.
It’s the Political Economy, Stupid argues that it is time to push back against the dictates of the capitalist logic and, by use of both theoretical and artistic means, launch a rescue of the very notion of the social.