Project Description: Empire
This project, Empire, continued to morph as did its subject, globalization. The project strives to portray in a discernible way the seemingly contradictory end goals of bottom line economic performance and human benefit. At first, centered on Davos, Switzerland, where each year the World Economic Forum conference is held, the work projected, as a device for representing the above ideas, Davos as the capital of an economic empire, as was Rome its empire’s capital.
After that initial portrayal, where the event (globalization) was envisioned as a semi-coordinated effort of interested entities, the phenomenon was later seen more broadly as the effect of the composite energy of entities predisposed toward a common interest; and I began to concentrate simply on the elements that testify toward the global metamorphosis.
At this point, however, in light of the recent and ongoing global economic distress, I began to feel that perhaps the concept of a concentration of energy has dematerialized into a state of disequilibrium or fragmentation. That is not to say that the socio/economic world will not continue to synthesize or that there are not still powerful entities and influences that are pushing toward an agenda of economic centralization and control. But that also is not to say that those particular entities that we like to see as having a sense of world interactivity really do have that oversight.
The growth of globalized interaction, though often questioned in terms of culture, economic development, and global economy, has never been in doubt. That is, the world will continue to become relatively smaller, and global interactions will continue to occur at all levels of society. History dictates to us that cultures will continue to influence each other even in places as remote as the deepest Amazonian rain forest or as protected as the Galapagos Islands. These interactive affects will moderate differences at the same time that they create conflicts.
The primary debate has always been around the question of benefit, as in cost/benefit analysis; and to that end whether a unique entity, such as a nation-state or a local culture, opts to embrace or inhibit such global influences. One of the major issues, when speaking to globalization in the modern era, has been about the capitalist enterprise. Capitalism is difficult enough to discuss when referring solely to the consequences of the authority of global corporations. But when the interests of corporate entities, democratic states, and monarchic and dictatorial powers become intertwined; the discussion becomes interminably complex. For most of us the issue of economic globalization or global empire revolves around our personal well-being. How do we as personal entities, members of a particular economic culture, and even as place-holders in a societal class fare in relation to similar others as well as to a ruling class or capitalist elite whom might increasingly influence our destinies? Is there still an historic progression toward more economic and political equivalence or is the sense of that progression merely a relative façade?
This project strives to break through some of the fog of political and emotional rhetoric around these issues in order to be able to construct and present a more vivid representation of contemporary cultural realities.