Capitalism in the Public Realm is an ongoing research project by artist Anne Katrine Senstad that addresses ethics, value systems, criticism and philosophical inquiries into the societal discourse through expansive forms of art practices, collaborations and exhibitions.
Money is that materially existing concept, a vast system of common interest and mutual dependence formed among great people, a self-propelling life of the dead, which moves hither and thither, blind and elemental, and, like a wild animal, it stands in constant need of being tamed and kept under control.
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, The Jena lectures 1802-03
LIQUID ASSETS – Russian Version, 2021 by Anne Katrine Senstad. Not-for-Sale NFT video in response to the invasion of Ukraine.
CAPITALISM IN THE PUBLIC REALM is an ongoing research and art production platform established by Anne Katrine Senstad in 2015. CAPITALISM IN THE PUBLIC REALM seeks to examine ethics, aesthetics, and philosophical ways to approach social political criticism through engaged, thoughtful and prolific art practices.
Taking place In 2023, the CAPITALISM IN THE PUBLIC REALM project’s new chapter, is Anne Katrine Senstad’s solo exhibition Mal Educación that presents an environment of critical neon text sculptures, abstract neon sculptures, video text installation, not-for-sale minted NFT’s and prints, at Good Children Gallery in New Orleans curated by Christopher Saucedo, a founding member of the gallery collective.
Other ambitious projects under the CAPITALISM IN THE PUBLIC REALM umbrella includes GGM Holdings, Senstad’s holdings company as pseudonym that utilizes speculative markets as interactive intervention activism, text based art as object and aesthetic production, essays and critical text collaborations, and large scale spatial neon installations.
The exhibition Mal Educación is supported by Office for Contemporary Art Norway and The Norwegian Government Artist Grant – Kulturdirektoratet.
Capitalism in the Public Realm
The platform started in 2015 with the monumental text work Gold Guides Me commissioned by the Bruges Art and Architecture Triennale in Belgium, and today encompasses numerous art works, texts, research, productions, performative sculptures and site specific interventions under the Capitalism in the Pubic Realm umbrella in a continuous flow in response to our critical times.
The overarching project art production responds to and utilizes the very same mechanisms as market place speculation, power and its dependence, the language of finance and economics, public advertisement and digital media, and corporate aesthetics. Each project is a contextualized dialogue with the psychological urban, social and architectural space, illuminated by critical discourse, aesthetics and ethics. If there are central underpinning concerns of the Capitalism in the Public Realm Project, once can identify care, sustainability and preservation of humanities, ethical values, political, environmental and social justice.
Gold Guides Me – Capitalism in the Public Realm,(2015) by Anne Katrine Senstad. Placed on the exterior of the historic Giestfabriek in Bruges, Belgium. LED signage, aluminum letters, scaffolding. Scale: 2 m H x 28 m L.