> Kontekst Collective/ Zadruga OktobarBelgrade/ Serbia
*1979, lives and works in Graz
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July 26th, 2016
The philosophy of financial markets: an interview of Elie Ayache by Vienna based artist Gerald Nestler:
The video cannot be embedded here, so please follow this link.
July 22th, 2016
July 20th, 2016
The last 10 days I mostly spend meeting artists from Belgrade and doing research about the logics of financial markets. Hopefully I can present you at the end with a text summing up the conclusions. For now I want to show you another investment objects by the Hypo Alpe Adria. A central corner of Belgrade, still known under the name of a former coffee house ‘tri lista duvana’.
source: beobuild.rs
Together with MPC Properties, owned by Petar Matic, it was intended to construct a Hotel-Complex for about 20-25 Million Euros. In 2007 the plans changed and instead of developing a hotel the construction of an office building began. Construction came finally to halt in 2010.
source: beobuild.rs
The building never saw any white collar workers.
July 11th, 2016
The following photos show one Hypo investments: an undeveloped land plot near the airport, to be exact, it is in Dobanovci. The land plot is called Cat- & Dogland and was bought in 2006 by an austrian-serbian investment group, Enthusa Ltd. registered in Cyprus. One half of the Enthusa Ltd. belonged to former RBI boss Stepic. The other half was owned by the Serbian Eki Properties, backed by powerful former serbian politicians: Aleksandar Vlahović, Danko Djunić and Dragan Lazarević.
Enthusa Ltd. got a loan of € 18.000.000,- from the Hpyo Alpe Adria to buy land near the Airport in Belgrade, of which actually only 30% got really invested; in the acquisition of Cat- & Dogland. The rest of the money vanished partially without any trace. Before the Enthusa Ltd. got liquidated the loan and interest rates aggregated to € 22 Million. The Cat-&Dogland got auctioned a few weeks ago.
July 7th, 2016
After a few days of settling in, it is now time to clear out the framework of the long-term project ‘Photography and Financial Markets’. Before I will show what all of this actually means it is important to start with a discussion of the present situation.
‚There are only language and bodies.‘ Alain Badiou said, in a critical response to the actual tendencies in science and art. Everything is in/through language, everything is written in/on the body. Poetry and photography, texts and selfies. The ideology of individuality and the demise of the subject (be it artistic, scientific or political). I am what I am writing in posts, I am what I am showing in my pictures. Express yourself! (But please, nothing else!) No universal idea, just texts, photos and individuals. To make it short: what Badiou criticizes is that any analysis of the body and/or language cannot surpass the actual; it is stuck in phenomenology, in the situation, in identity. This privilege of the actual means also a lack of abstraction, which would be necessary to deal with financial markets.
That is why photography was and is the perfect medium for representing the excluded, the suffering body, the oppressive body; scars and muscles; victim and perpetrator. Maybe I have time to discuss the shift from representation to presentation within photography in a later post but for now we have to deal with a restriction of photography when we are dealing with abstract topics. The question is how to represent the operations of Financial Markets?
Before working on this question it is necessary to understand how global financial markets work. They operate not on the level on the actual. They are purely abstract. To be clear: the catastrophic consequences affect the actual but the financial market itself operates through abstract models. It is an operation driven by financial mathematics and algorithms. The often mentioned critique that financial market models do not relate to the “Realökonomie” does not go far enough, because the models only relate to other abstractions. To put it differently: they are not abstract as they are mathematical formulas but they are because those formulas only include abstract data (=value).
We have to levels of operation: 1. The level of actual consequences, which can be photographed. 2. The purely abstract level of financial mathematics which rule global capitalism.
The project will therefore work on those two levels:
a) The Actual: An exemplary specimen of the failures of global capitalism is the famous Hypo Alep Adria (now: HETA Resolutions). During my stay in Belgrade I will photograph investments of the Hypo, some with a clear criminal background.
b) The Abstract: This is the real long-term part of the project. After examining financial mathematics from an artistic viewpoint it is the intention to formulate a market model which opens up a space for artists within the realm of financial mathematics.
Those two levels will be interweaved by the usage of collages.
This project understand itself as open, collaborations are highly welcomed!
July 3rd, 2016
Belgrade, it’s been a while, last time I visited I was bothering boxers with my camera lens, enjoying your vivid streets and night life, arguing with securities and laughing with fantastic people.
The residency project of rotor – West Balkan Calling – made it possible that I can stay in Belgrade for four weeks to work on a project which could be called ‘Photography and Financial Markets’. It will be about photography and its restrictions, financial disasters, the mathematics of it and the consequences, but more about this in the days to come. I want to thank everyone involved to make this residency possible: Anna, Oksana, Margarethe, Anton, Vida and Marko, Thank you!
The first entry of my residency-diary will focus on a book in my backpack which will be the perfect companion for the bus-ride to Belgrade. The beautiful thing of travelling by bus or train for me is that it gives me time without any distractions. No Wi-Fi.
The book ‘Post-Industrial Stories’ by Ioana Cirlig and Marin Raica is one of the best photography books I have seen lately. It tells the story of mining towns and their decline in Romania. A dear in a kitchen, a beauty queen with a handwritten bow, a cup of coffee in an empty bar, a young boy with an off-center tie… The daily life of declining cities is presented in an extraordinary beauty which actually strengthens its critical approach. To give one example:
(c) Marin Raica
More photos can be seen here.
My backpack is ready: cameras, books and excitement. Belgrade, I see you tomorrow!