Capitalism in the Public Realm

CAPITALISM IN THE PUBLIC REALM – GGM HOLDINGS – An activistic platform utilizing speculative market places and their mechanisms

GOLD GUIDES ME HOLDINGS / GGM HOLDINGS is a fake holdings company created by artist Anne Katrine Senstad for the purpose of displaying and producing critical media, technology and not-for-sale text-based minted NFT’s on GGM Holdings Opensea platform and a mysterious corporate shadow website GGMHOLDINGS.com with no further contact information displayed, echoing the identity of hidden financial systems.This form of activist text based art and publishing is a medium to display statements pointing to critique of the arms-industry, hostile warfare for profit, and observations on the developing oligarchic and plutocratic self sustaining philosophies and enterprises, as well as utilize Senstad’s critical finance lingo text-based neon art works as video format versions. Through utilizing marketplace developed for speculation, the statements infiltrate by being made available to a wider audience, and act as a form of direct activism through placement on the global technology and speculative market arena.

GGM HOLDINGS was first developed while at an artist residency in the UAE in 2014 in unison with Senstad’s development and research for the commissioned monumental text installation Gold Guides Me – Capitalism in the Public Realm, produced in 2015 for the Bruges Art and Architecture Triennale in Belgium. Bruges is the location of the worlds first stock exchange, The Bruges’ “bursa Brugensis” , and was established in 1531 . A motivational byline for GGM holdings reflects a generalized wholesale of art as both commodity and currency, the corporatization and colonization of the artistic domain and agency, questioning new and contemporary developing formats of art ownership, advocacy and production dictated by the corporate realm. In the text series, Senstad interweaves the profound sublimity of ethical questions coupled with a critical direct statement. The statements are often drawn from the history of philosophy, mechanics of finance and economics, religious statements on value systems and ownership, and politics, where the artist alters the statement as word play, or emphasizes the lingo through the material, such as signage or digital technology.

LIQUID ASSETS – The video NFT version of Senstad’s text work “LIQUID ASSETS” exists in Chinese, Russian, and English, addresses the spectacle of the finance world and its global domination, ethics and value systems. The Russian Not-for-sale NFT video version was created in spring of 2022 in response to the invasion of Ukraine and the rapid growth of the global arms industry as a result, where as example, nations now face the threat of a total liquidation of its societal portfolio and its inhabitants due to a warfare business model capitalizing on death and ecological destruction.

The Russian font is created in the style and aesthetic of the corporate and governmental plaque in a somber dark heavy metal or military logo. LIQUID ASSETS points to the value reduction of the citizen and human life to a gram of expendable currency.

The Russian version of “Liquid Assets” is dedicated to the Ukrainian people and in support of humanitarian efforts to secure safety for the growing number of refugees globally, and Ukrainian citizens effected by the wrongful invasion of Ukraine.