Socio-Economic Transformation
How can economic progress and social wellbeing be recoupled, ranging from critically assessing the growth imperative of modern capitalist societies to imagining alternative economic practices?
About
The current economic system contributes to environmental degradation, rising inequality, falling solidarity, and political polarization. It is proving unfit for meeting social needs within planetary boundaries. Humanity’s collective future depends on transforming our practices of value creation so that they serve social and planetary wellbeing.
Curatorial Note
Curatorial Note
Paul Kolling, WB190621 No. 1-21, 2020 © Foto: Maik Graef
Paul Kolling researches emerging technologies to rearrange them, to (re)appropiate them, to reveal new perspectives that can be obscured through complexity and rhetoric. Through this interest, he creates cartographies of the imaginary, and the reality hidden behind technospheres of power. Kolling does not only work on installations and hybrid objects that strive to make complicated issues accessible, but also collectively towards decentralized technological systems. He is one third of terra0.org, a research group exploring the creation of hybrid ecosystems. His series 'Westbound-190621' which recreates China’s Silk Road. The artist strapped a GPS to a train departing on one of its stations – from Zhenzhou to Hamburg – and gathered satellite imagery of the entire journey. Thus 'Westbound-190621' reveals one possible reason for China’s reticence in naming specific routes: the presence of Uyghur work camps. By mapping the blurred outlines of China’s Belt and Road, "Westbound 190621 (1.968-3936)" hints at the ways art can expose systems of control in politized territories, social environments, and economic alliances.