The Situation is an exhibition by Oliver Ressler for the Museum of Contemporary Cuts (MoCC). Curated by Lanfranco Aceti in collaboration with Jonathan Munro the exhibition presents a series of artworks by Oliver Ressler that engage with the contemporary social crisis. Ressler has worked on the theme of the contemporary post-postcapitalistic society and its crises both as an artist and as a curator. It’s the Political Economy, Stupid, is a show that Ressler has curated that engages with the contemporary prolonged economic crisis and brings together a series of international artists to discuss both the political and economic implications of the dismantling of democracy in favor of oligarchic corporate systems of governance.
As an artist and filmmaker Ressler produces installations, projects in public space, performances and films that challenge the viewer to engage with ‘that distant world’ that appears to be the contemporary economic.
The Situation collects Ressler’s recent artworks and displays them as a social media practice – questioning the consumption of the images as well as modalities of constructions of engagements in increasingly disconnected societies – where the political element is no longer represented as a direct consequence of economic and social actions. Both the artworks and the curatorial framework question contemporary structures by asking questions that remand necessarily to an historical analysis of our times as a byproduct of complex philosophical traditions and interpretations.
“What is the relationship between history and revolution? What is revolutionary transformation? How is it possible to sustain and carry out the consequences of a revolutionary transformation? And how do revolutions connect with one another to produce a new form of worldwide solidarity?”
The artworks are not an exegesis – which often plagues contemporary political artworks – but an exploration of humanity and its lack of solidarity. Hence all of the questions asked in the artworks and the exhibit can be reduced to one about human nature and political power: why do we continue to fail in the realization of a fairer society?
Thomas Nail, Returning to Revolution: Deleuze, Guattari and Zapatismo (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2012), 2.
Senior curator: Lanfranco Aceti. Curator: Jonathan Munro.
01 December 2014 to 31 December 2014
Museum of Contemporary Cuts: http:/www.museumofcontemporarycuts.org
Image: Oliver Ressler. Courtesy of the artist.