Capital of Accumulation

2010/ Installation with 2 channel video projection and audio, 2 books in glass-fronted bookcase.

Duration: 50:00 minutes

The promised city, Hebbel Am Ufer, Berlin (2010); Museum of Modern Art, Warsaw (2010); The Capital of Accumulation, Project 88, Mumbai (2010), Manifesta 9, Genk, Belgium (2012)

The Capital of Accumulation is a video installation that writes an oblique narrative of the relationship between metropolises and the world in counterpoint to Rosa Luxemburg’s exceptional critique of global political economy, ‘The Accumulation of Capital’. The work, a 50 minute long video diptych, trawls through a haunting, dream like landscape straddling Warsaw, Berlin and Bombay/Mumbai to produce a riff on cities, capitalism and the twentieth century’s turbulent history. Part natural history, part detective journal… part forensic analysis, part cosmopolitan urban investigation…and part philosophical dialogue……”The Capital of Accumulation” offers a considered and personal reflection on the remaining possibilities for radical renewal in our times.

The forest withers.
The mountain falls down on its knees.
The desert turns into a mirage.
The mine makes money and then some more and then the seam runs dry.
A factory closes.
A mall refuses to open.
Variable capital becomes constant and then metastasizes.
Living labour dies and awaits its post-mortem turn on a gurney in a forensic laboratory.