The Geography of Crisis : Jan Adriaans

The Geography of Crisis

Video-installation

Duration video: 10 min. 46 sec.

The increasingly growing gap between the financial sector of stock markets and hedge funds and the real economy based on resources pushes economy further into abstraction. Economic risk models, existing of rules and algorithms are used for analyses and prediction, but also make risk-taking a financial asset itself. This product is disconnected of human production or the material boundaries of planet earth. Is it possible for stock market traders to oversee the consequences of their behavior in the real economy? Is it possible to empathize with the far reaching consequences if you’re in the heat of the game? The internalization of strategies is a premise to play. Thus, if you’re in the game, you only respond to a contained situation. A danger to the stock exchange is positive herding. When investors massively start following others in an irrational rage.

To think crisis as a human misuse of an ideal model, or alienation from a perfect situation, we overlook the fact that these models are already part of our judgement, and build with biases all along. “A bank run is not due to an error of the model, but is rather due to the execution of the model in practice.”

Voice: Susan Davis

Thanks to: Hyun Park, Hyein Lee, SeMA NANJI Residency, Seoul Museum of Art, Seoul, Hongik University, Michelle Carmody, Crystal Ennis, Monique Hendriksen, Marie-Andree Pellerin

Video excerpt, contact the artist for full-video preview access

The Geography of Crisis Excerpt from Jan Adriaans on Vimeo.