Capitalism in the Public Realm

ELEMENTS I – X : A NEON SCULPTURE INSTALLATION SERIES

MUSIC FOR PLUTOCRACY is a spatial multi-chromatic neon sculpture installation with a sound environment by composer JG Thirlwell

Music for Plutocracy – ELEMENTS V was exhibited at S12 Gallery, Norway, in 2021. Music for Plutocracy is the fifth structural and experiential sensory neon light environment in the ELEMENTS series, contextualized with Senstad’s platform CAPITALISM IN THE PUBLIC REALM as a chapter in the project. MUSIC FOR PLUTOCRACY – ELEMENTS V is also included in Senstad’s book NEON GUIDES ME (2022) with an essay by Erik Meling.

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Look at the orators in our republics; as long as they are poor, both state and people can only praise their uprightness; but once they are fattened on the publics funds, they conceive a hatred for justice, plan intrigues against the people and attack democracy.

Plutus, Aristophanes (388 BC)

MUSIC FOR PLUTOCRACY by Anne Katrine Senstad with sound by JG Thirlwell. S12 Gallery, Norway. Neon, transparent columns, transformers, wires, fastners.

MUSIC FOR PLUTOCRACY by Anne Katrine Senstad with sound by JG Thirlwell. S12 Gallery, Norway. Neon, transparent columns, transformers, wires, fastners.

The complexity of the installation can be entered through numerous portals: the visual, the sensorial, the psychological and physiological – where the marriage between the multi-chromatic light and sound environment, with critical ideas on power, greed, consumption, consumerism and ethics, and the devotional aspects of capitalism and its power,i.e. the golden temple as an alluring neon palace, creates the totality of the immersion.

The experiential light and sound sculpture environment traverses perception of space, time and the purity of both cosmic and mathematical properties, – and yet simultaneously aspects of ethics as representational through redefining our perception of the contemporary world we find ourselves in, inviting the participant to rest within the folds of a symphonic universe, offering a space of contemplation and reflection. ELEMENTS V, which constitutes MUSIC FOR PLUTOCRACY, is the fifth structural and experiential light environment in the ELEMENTS series. The ephemerality of color and sound, operating on scalas of frequencies and temperatures, provides for what can be described as the essence of the immersive, when the public looses awareness of their surroundings and the exterior world, becoming part of the art work itself, as we are part of the very fabric of a form of society.

Excerpt from the exhibition artist talk with Norwegian art historian and author Erik Meling. Meling is based in Spain and his text The Pillars of Perception appears in Senstad’s book NEON GUIDES ME.

MUSIC FOR PLUTOCRACY was supported by The Norwegian Government’s Grant for Artists, Arts Council Norway/Fond for Lyd og Bilde, Norske Billedkunstnere/BKV, Norway, and Foundation for Contemporary Art New York.

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