From Krakow: Socialism Failed, Capitalism is Bankrupt. What comes Next?

Oliver Ressler’s Socialism Failed, Capitalism is Bankrupt. What comes Next? at Bunkier Sztuki in Krakow, Poland, starts with a meaningful and timely question but ends with a hollow sound. The physical space of the exhibition is huge, and Ressler attempts to fill it with monumental wall text, Too Big to Fail (2011), and three videos projected onto massive screens. In the first room, the video Comuna Under Construction (2010, with Dario Azzellini) is a single-channel projection filmed in Caracas, Venezuela that features interviews with self-organizing local residents working together to better their lives. The artist is invisible and silent behind the camera, letting his subjects play out their daily dramas or address the viewer directly without interference. In the next room, the two videos from the 2010 work that share the exhibition’s title present a different place in a similar format. On the left, a colossal projection displays interviews with workers from the largest bazaar in Yerevan, Armenia, while on the right, a slightly smaller screen shows still shots of factories and manufacturing centers in Armenia that have been privatized, operate with reduced production, or are closed.

Despite the enormity of scale, the exhibition fails to deliver on the provocation of its original query. While it’s evident that the work is meant to impart a sympathetic understanding of both the micro-economies of these specific places and of the global impact of late-market, “bankrupt” capitalism or failed Soviet-era socialism, the information-only

Oliver Ressler. Socialism Failed, Capitalism is Bankrupt. What comes Next?, 2011 (still); video. Courtesy of the Artist and Bunkier Sztuki, Krakow.

presentation is problematic given its contemporary art context. Because there is no analysis or interpretation by the artist, there is no transformation from the appearance and tone of straight television journalism to the potentially influential and moving experience that art can provide. This reviewer feels it’s an opportunity lost. After all, these are stories that have been heard before; what’s there to call attention to these particular plights in a sea of collapsed financial systems?

While Ressler may have struggled with his own conscience in the making of these videos—one imagines he might have thought to “let the people speak for themselves”—what he provides seems restrained to the point of prosaic superficiality. In the end, the most apparent lesson of this exhibition is that it’s no longer subversive or daring to go to a destitute city and film its residents; instead, it might be more radical to display an opinion about it.

Socialism Failed, Capitalism is Bankrupt. What comes Next? was on view at Bunkier Sztuki, in Krakow, Poland, through August 28, 2011.