CAPITALISM IN THE PUBLIC REALM
IST- MARX – MARX-IST neon text
Under Capitalism, labour does not create only goods, it also produces itself and the worker as commodity.
Karl Marx
IST-MARX – MARX-IST, 2023, by Anne Katrine Senstad. White neon on green wall, transformer, fastners. Edition of 6. Good Children Gallery, 2023
The neon text IST-MARX – MARX-IST, (2023), in German, presents a word play on the term Marxist, questioning the role of the ideologists purpose and impact, the eternal struggle between power and people, while referencing Shakespear’s Hamlet, (Act 3, Scene 1), To be, or not to be, that is the question – a contemplation on the value and purpose of life and death. In Senstad’s deconstruction of Marxist, or Marxism itself, the neon text itself becomes a question mark without the presence of its symbol, that asks the viewer to contemplate the need for communal and societal principals and value systems, set in perspective of the Anthroposcene and the presence of wider class division.
The neon text statement IST-MARX MARXI-IST plays with notions of equality on several levels. Established within the ideological, economic and social-political concept of Marxism, to be defined as a “marxist” implies the phenomena of class struggle, redistribution of wealth, global equality, societal transformation, and living according to sets of specific social-political concepts considered to be provocative by a western culturally gentrified and consumerist based society. Further, through the art work, the term Marxist has been transformed into a commodification of itself, inverting it’s political-economic founded dynamics, as well as pointing to the consumerist iconification of historic revolutionaries popularized in the 1960’s.
In utilizing materials representing commerce, consumerism, culture economy and capital of the public realm, the art work references Walter Benjamin’s ideas on Fordism i.e mass production, standardized generic production and evolution of mass consumerism established in the 20th century industrialized world. Senstad emphasizes here the paradox of polarized systems and the place of the individual citizen within the struggle between economies and technologies, and public and private ownership of data, autonomy, balance and health, seeking to activate processes of critical thought and response within the individual perceiver.
IST-MARX – MARX-IST, (Pink Blue) 2023, by Anne Katrine Senstad. Giclee Print on Canson Platine Fibre Rag Paper, 300 g. Scale; 40 x 40 inches. Edition of 6
The work IST-MARX MARX-IST created for the exhibition is supported by Office for Contemporary Art Norway and he Norwegian Government’s Grant for Artists/ Kulturdirektoratet
Capitalism in the Public Realm 