georg klein
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installations > UNzuRECHT | Case A : video documentation (6:00)
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UNzuRECHT A / UNorJUSTNESS A (Finance)
2013
Georg Klein + Steffi Weismann

Audiovisual installation with 3 sides
2 projections panes with tranducers,
1 Monitor with headphones,
ca. 8min. each, simult.


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The installation UNorJUSTNESS | Case A : Finance has 3 parts, which are brought in opposition to each other, visually and acoustically. There are shown three forms of work, of earning money, of „making“ money:

1 – Worker (Palm Oil Plantation, Indonesia) 7:53
2 – Trader (Commodities Trading, Switzerland) 7:53
3 – Investor (CopyTrader Promotion, worldwide) 8:44

Each of the three examples appear to be independent of one another, but in the globalised world they are all directly connected: the labourer produces commodities which the faraway trader deals in using money supplied by worldwide investors. The example used here is palm oil, which can by now be found in every tenth product on a supermarket shelf, and which has for years been seeing a boom in production, above all in Indonesia, where the rainforests are being cut down and palm oil plantations cultivated instead. Large companies sell the raw palm oil to the food industry, with Switzerland being the central hub for commodities trading. Bankers and investors use the boom to trade in securities and futures in the commodity market – a boom from which small investors can also profit via 'copy trading'.

These three ways to make money couldn't be any more different, in terms of both the nature of the work and the pay. Klein and Weismann raise the issue of the proportionality of labour and earnings: from concrete, physical work via non-physical work to one of the most abstract – and supposedly easiest – ways to make money, with no knowledge, no ability and no effort: no work.

Space configuration:
Videos 1 and 2 are positioned opposite one another as large projections, and together form an audio-visual interstice. The suspended projection panes are stimulated by transducers, and so also function as loudspeaker-surfaces, which means that the two separate working atmospheres are audibly combined. Only one visitor at a time can pass between the two worlds to reach the third video with its headphones, where they are then made an enticing offer. The visitor is supposed to be enlisted as an investor who, by effortlessly copying – as a 'copy jack' – the transactions executed by the supposed professionals, can basically earn money in their sleep.

Whereas the two videos on the projection panes provide dry, documentary insight into two very different worlds of work, the third video – an advertising film which originally comes from a trading firm's internet platform – bluntly exaggerates the capitalist logic of achieving maximum profit with minimal effort, a logic which in turn has enormous effects on the point of origin: the worker and his environment.

MuseumsQuartier Wien
freiraum INTERNATIONAL
3rd Oct - 23rd Nov 2014


survival art festival
Wroclaw (Poland)
June 2018

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