Post-Social Sea Cartographic Drawing (Dimensions variable), Video Loop (4k, 7min), 2022
Just as the tracing of intercontinental trade routes has become possible through contemporary satellite technologies, it is also possible to track the paths of private vessels, including luxury yachts. In Post-Social Sea, it is the profit-side of these global trade routes which is made visible, The accumulation of wealth one faces in this alternative mapping project is often the outcome of destructive extraction industries, and even more often connected to tax avoidance through the use mailbox companies which obscure ownership and thus the profits generated through the exploitation of both humans and the other-than-human.
Post-Social Sea is a counter movement to the desire for opacity of the elite by exposing the values of boats, flags of tax haven countries, and places where they’ve travelled. In particular, Post-Social Sea points to the literal and de-facto privatization of nature in the Mediterranean, particularly in the area of former Yugoslavia, where the transfer of commons into private property is highly visible to the local population, but remains out of the focus of global attention. Taking advantage of the dismantling of former socialist structures has facilitated the accumulation of wealth by certain well-connected individuals, and turned formerly state-owned land on the Adriatic coast into enclaves of the super-rich. Through Post-Social Sea it becomes possible to see how two uses of nature cynically complement each other, the exploitation of resources and the right to enjoy and consume the remaining unspoiled natural areas.
Research, Design, Layout & Video Editing: Angela Anderson Color Correction: Hannes Böck
Produced for the exhibition Whiteness as Property - Racism and Ownership curated by Ana Hoffner ex-Prvulovic* at Künstlerhaus Wien, Feb 11 - June 6, 2022