Crude Economy: CREATIVE CHANGE
Programme 7: Creative Change
Neo-liberalism has entailed the large-scale privatization of public services and property. Today local water supplies, for instance, are being bought back from corporate owners at high costs. Community gardening is becoming a more and more popular way to claim urban spaces for non-commercial use. Are we seeing the advent of a new social understanding that resists economy as the sole measure of things? Or is this just another incentive for rising real estate values? Creative Change looks at accelerated globalization and commercialization, and its shifting effects on human and natural environments.
The Shoemaker And The Hatter, John Halas & Joy Batchelor (GB 1950 | 16:00 min)
Produced for promoting the Marshall Plan, this prizewinning cartoon shows two traders arguing about how best to recover their livelihoods after the war. The hatter believes in producing a few hats at a high price. The shoemaker wants to lower costs through mass production and make his profit through export and free trade.
Shell Spirit, Geoffrey Jones (GB 1963 | 2:00 min)
Built to a dizzying pace, this historical Shell advertisement charts an automobile’s journey from the city to the seaside where fields give way to sandy beaches and a single gull swooping into the surf.
Tatort Fraport (Crime Scene: Fraport), David Rug (Germany 2009 | 25:00 min)
Crime Scene: Fraport shows everyday life in the Kelsterbach forest camp, built to protest against the expansion of the Frankfurt Airport. young eco-activists talk about their motivation for a struggle doomed to fail. In January 2009, the camp is cleared by the police.
The Residence (A Wager For The Afterlife), Vermeir & Heiremans (Belgium 2012 | 37:00 min)
The video thematizes the artist as an entrepreneur in a global society. Besides the Chinese artist and architect Ma Wen, two fictional characters appear: a wealthy investor who commissions the architect to create a house for his afterlife, and Lady Credit, who envelopes a multiplicity of roles, similar to the financial market’s volatility.
Image: The Shoemaker and the Hatter, John Halas & Joy Batchelor, 1950 Courtesy of The Halas & Batchelor Collection www.halasandbatchelor.co.uk