Looped Imagination
Repetition is fundamental for the making of a format. A format becomes the more stable and recognizable – and also, the more dominating – the more its scale (literally, its size) and frequency gets. For those dreaming about the possibility of breaking with oppressive, highly regulated, authoritarian or simply monotonous scenarios, repetition comes as the evidence of an impotency to shift, re-interpret, expand, undo, redefine things. At its worst it is the evidence of the incapacity of dreaming and imagining new possibilities. The disempowering of imagination results from the stability, the excess of stability, of the possible.
That is visible in the impact economy has in our lives. The difficulty one meets if trying to imagine a new economy and finance based on the distribution of resources and welfare, rather than the accumulation of capital as a device of societal organization and influence. The scenario seems unchangeable.
Looped Imagination (2016) presents a narrative of endless replacements. At the centre of the image one reads the sentence ‘tax shelter.’ The text is removed and re-placed endlessly, highlighting how the protection of taxes, how the restitution of economy and finance is the one operation one can take for granted. The remaining objects in the image appear as nothing but compositions, abstractions, dehumanized elements, void of imagination.
The images were created from an instant captured during the dismantling the work OXT by Kevin van Braak, presented at Sonsbeek 2016 (an art event that takes place in Arnhem since 1949, where referential art projects took place, for instance, Mike Kelley presented the exhibition The Uncanny).