CAPITALISM IN THE PUBLIC REALM – MAL EDUCACIÓN – neon text and video works
Annihilation of the question compels praxis
Theodor Adorno, 1931
The central text work MAL EDUCACIÓN sprung out of Senstad’s Good Children Gallery exhibition concept on ethics and the illusions of societal and individual power struggles, greed and oppression. Senstad creates her own form of Wittgenstein’s Language-Game and Word-Meaning, where language is defined by the actions into which it is woven. In Mal Educación shelooks at ethical concerns through her word play and subliminal decipherment, through its root self – as a word-play on the insulting La Mala Educación. Taking its title from Spanish film director Pedro Almodóvar’s 2004 film, Bad Education, which in essence narrates the nature of oppression by institutions of power over the disenfranchised and marginalized, in Aldromovar’s world as the prostitute, addict, abused and transsexual victimized by hypocrisy, by the very men of god. Illuminated by Almodóvar’s cinematic acuity, Senstad’s text works awaken overarching ethical questions, and brings forth the need for an awareness and to stop and consider the world we live in. We may consider the impact of political-consultant tailored alterations to societal value systems, the state of financial and corporate power, our place within the consumerist existence, and by reviewing the remaining traces of our shared humanity with its fragility at the threshold of an era defined by economics of war and post-humanism. The discourse on the effects on our social infrastructure can be penetrated through the optics of philosophy and communication in dialogue with the sensorial and cognitive languages of light and color.
MAL EDUCACIÓN is also incorporated in new video works created as part of the exhibition, as market place intervention used for Senstad’s GGM Holdings not-for-sale NFT project, in Russian and Chinese. The Russian and Chinese versions are translated to vernacular terms used in authentic lingo and contemporary slang, created in collaboration with artists whose mother tongue is Russian and Chinese.
NFT Video works by GGM Holdings on OPENSEA
THREE BLACK AND WHITE VIDEO STILLS, IN SPANISH/FRENCH, CHINESE AND RUSSIAN:
Top: MALA EDUCACIÓN / BAD EDUCATION – an NFT word play on the streetwise Spanish term, transforming Mala to Mal, meaning sick or wrongdoing in French, the text pieceMAL EDUCACIÓN makes fun of itself, as a ryhthmic take on the many Spanish pronunciations depending on which Spanish speaking country you are from. The white line refers to the Latin American Cartels and their oppressive violence onto the citizens of their own nations, holding millions of people hostage under poverty while forcing large swaths of peoples into becoming migrants, forced into illegal border crossings into the US, murder of the innocent deposited into unmarked mass graves, death cults and gangs as the only survival for youth, disappearances of people in Cartel controlled areas, and the largely unchecked corruption and political theatre. Middle: MALA EDUCACIÓN / BAD EDUCATION in Chinese is a long distance, long term creative collaboration between Senstad and a Chinese artist. The expression Bad Education in local Chinese lingo translates to an “Underprivileged looser” and/or “small penis”, someone who has no access to digital existence or online presence, no technology real estate, no bank account to speak of, no access to the private housing market in the modern Chinese high risk capitalism universe, therefore no prestigious education or future job opportunities, nor societal or social climbing possibilities. Bottom: MALA EDUCACIÓN / BAD EDUCATION in Russian is a straightforward translation, assisted by a Russian speaking artist, and illustrates itself by being placed on a gunpowder trail reminding us of the lucrative and bloody history of firearms set in light of todays enterprise of war manufacturing as gold rush, the ease of acquiring assault weapons anywhere internationally and the resulting public shootings and outbursts of violence, and the industrious success of the iconic Kalashnikov / Калашникова, known as the AK 47 assault rifle. In view of the violent history of Russia, a country who has never experienced traditional democracy, having gone straight from feudalism under the Russian Empire to Communism as dictatorship, to Plutocracy and Oligarchy, weapons are close to their heart. A white line typically represents the Central American illegal drug trade and its violence, while in Russian terms, it also represents Cartels, human trafficking and drug trade, but added in, it represents the trail of invasion of sovereign states, crossing sovereign lines annexing neighboring territories rich in natural resources, strategic harbors, sovereign wealth and money in the bank, developed technology and futures in oil and gas harvesting. Invasion of a sovereign country can be used for harboring asymmetrical global warfare, technological warfare and as method for political infiltrating of a third country or continent – an empire at constant war. The result is still the brutality imposed on the innocent.
The artworks created for the exhibition MAL EDUCACIÓN are supported by Office for Contemporary Art Norway and the Norwegian Government’s Grant for Artists/ Kulturdirektoratet Statens Kunstner Stipend for Etablerte Kunstnere.
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Capitalism in the Public Realm 