March 19 to July 3
Senam Okudzeto
Capitalism and Schizophrenia
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Component parts:
1. Book covers in vitrine
2. Fax letters and contracts from con-artist
3. Diary poster of pages from con-artist’s diary
4. Poster of 419 scam emails
5. Small ink text drawings interpreting Deleuze
Opening and artist talk:
March 18, 6.30 pm
Introduction to Concept
The city of Fribourg is a small, picturesque university town just to the north of Geneva. Its gently fading economy has been in need of a lift for some years. In order to address this problem, the city council selectively invited prominent businessmen to become residents of the town; additional sweeteners were laid on in the form of large bank loans and tax breaks. One such man was forced to leave in a great hurry, having been caught in dishonest dealings by the authorities. «Capitalism and Schizophrenia» is an artwork centered around the «Library,»— a floor-based vitrine that holds fragments of an abandoned archive: the book sleeves of roughly two hundred business school self-help books. In addition, the audience is presented with phony business contracts, diary entries and correspondence, acquired from the irate landlord of a Swiss con-artist who resided in Fribourg as an invitee of the City Council. His abandoned apartment contained documents and letters detailing his activities. He has been missing since 2002, when he was forced into hiding in order to escape arrest by INTERPOL.
Money as Phantom Object
This artwork is a discussion of objects and commodities that do not exist, in the form of misappropriated World Bank loans, phantom development projects, and the presumed absence of social and moral values in conjunction with generating exchange value. Money itself is, as Michael Taussig suggests, a kind of «phantom object.»(1) But what, and where, are the material memories of these missing objects? How do we trace a system that is global in scope and operates through the abstract belief structure of stocks and shares, deals and contracts, wherein confidence and the signification of power are in themselves the strongest commodities?
My work-in-progress «Capitalism and Schizophrenia» attempts to grapple with this problem through an abandoned archive, a library consisting of roughly two hundred business school self-help books and phony business contracts I acquired from the irate landlord of a Swiss con-artist, whose many fields of action included Ghana. The titles of the books are absurd and often funny, but seen en masse they become disturbing. When viewed next to the neurotic scribbles in the subject’s diary, pasted anxiously over appointments on colored Post-it notes, the archive becomes a marker of our subject’s mental instability and a sure hint that there is much emptiness in financial ambition.
The fragility of global markets represented by the archive is contrasted with another work, based on a spectral electronic archive of «419»(2) scam emails. These are emails supposedly sent from corrupt African officials, asking Westerners to help them launder stolen monies. The New York Times recently reported that West African 419 scams successfully defraud Americans of more than 100 million US dollars per year. What is the subtext of a scenario whereby open confessions of African dishonesty and corruption are successfully presented as legitimate invitations to do business? The success of these letters suggests reverse colonial conquest, showing an awareness of business and trade that exploits a Western capitalist culture of economic speculation.
This artwork juxtaposes the archive of Western (Swiss) dishonesty, which, being composed of mostly American self-help business books, might describe another kind of untruth (that of ‹success› and its easy acquisition), with my own personal archive of 419 scams representing a form of African dishonesty, which, being based on historical fact, actually contains some semblance of truth. In the end the piece represents the insanity of the global monetary system, and perhaps annotates Gilles Deleuze’s assertion that in a global capitalist system, the true anti-hero is the schizophrenic. (S. O.)
(1) Michael Taussig, The Devil and Commodity Fetishism in South America, p. 4, Chapel Hill Press (1994).
(2) So called because of the Nigerian Law that addresses this type of fraud.
Senam Okudzeto (UK/USA/Ghana), born 1972 in Chicago, Ill, USA, lives and works in Basel/Accra/London/New York. She is founder and director of the NGO «Art in Social Structures», a member of the artists collective «Tropical Goth» and member of the editorial board of the CAA publication «Art Journal.» She is a Doctoral Candidate in Cultural Studies at The London Consortium, London University, Thesis: «Ghana Must Go, Modernity, Memory and Material Culture in Post-Independence West Africa.» Teaching Experience: 2008 Visiting Professor, New York University (NYU) Study Abroad Campus in Ghana; 2007 Visiting Professor and Lecturer, NYU Steinberg School, New York; 2006 Visiting Professor and Lecturer, New York University (NYU) study abroad campus in Accra, Ghana; visiting lecturer at several universities in Basel, London, New York.
Selected Solo Exhibitions: International project, PS1 MOMA, NYC (2007); Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Harvard, Cambridge, MA (2004); Burrough Market, London (2003); Dana Center, Loyola University, New Orleans (2000); The Fridge, London (1999); The Brickhouse, London (1998)
Selected Group Exhibitions: «Nostalgie. L’istante e la durata del tempo», Museo d’Arte Contemporanea di Villa Croce, Genoa (2008); «eFEMera: the art of feminist activism», Binghampton University Museum, NY (2007); «The Color Line», Jack Shainman Gallery, New York (2007); «Cape 07», Cape Town (2007); «Dak’art», Biennale Senegal (2006); «Women with Guns», National Gallery, New Orleans (2006); «The Whole World is Rotten», Contemporary Art Center, Cincinnati, USA (2006); «Africa Remix», Centre Pompidou, Paris (2005); «Fela Kuti: Black President», Barbican Center, London (2004)