The great manoeuvre @ steirischer herbst

Open­ing of the exhibition: 
Sat, Sep­tem­ber 25 2010, 16:00 /// 
Jako­min­is­traße, Graz ///

Dura­tion of the exhibition: 
Sep­tem­ber 25 — Octo­ber 17 2010

Artists talk: 
Octo­ber 2 and 9 2010, 15:00

Screen­ing I
Sat, Octo­ber 2 2010, 17:00 — 19:15
Wern­er Rydl: The great manoeuvre
Wern­er Rydl: Embar­go (Burn­ing Money)
Wall Street: Sequence of the “greed is good”-speech from Gor­don Gekko
Futu­ra­ma: Episode “Future Stock”

Screen­ing II:
Sat, Octo­ber 9 2010, 17:00 — 19:15
Der “Euro­pean Kings Club — E.K.C.” (1991–1994)
“L’objet du Scan­dale” de Guil­laume Durand — Jérôme Kerviel
The Ponzi Scheme (trail­er)
Bombs, Bul­lets and Fraud — Dis­cov­er the Orig­i­nal Ponzi Scheme (sequence)

“Nowa­days you can not prove if an input tax is accept­ed reck­less­ly or not – and here­in lies the great manoeu­vre where you are able to manip­u­late amount of tax­es and direct them to a desired direc­tion.” (Inter­view with Wern­er Rydl on Octo­ber 13th 2004 in Sirinhaem/Brasil)

Dubi­ous deals, mon­ey laun­der­ing, greedy bankers – the cur­rent cri­sis is focus­ing the pub­lic eye on the shady tac­tics of a few trick­sters on the inter­na­tion­al finan­cial mar­kets. While some react with accu­sa­tions and oth­ers with appease­ments, the Linz-based art col­lec­tive qujOchÖ exam­ines the meth­ods of those who exploit finan­cial-cap­i­tal­ist inter­ac­tions for their own pur­pos­es and cheat the sys­tem in an inge­nious and inscrutable man­ner. The analy­sis focus­es on real indi­vid­u­als and their prac­tices, rep­re­sent­ing them in a com­plex instal­la­tion: how could so many peo­ple fall for the haz­ardous promis­es of Charles Ponzi? Why was Ivan “The Ter­ri­ble” Boesky applaud­ed for his “greed is all right” speech? How did Wern­er Rydl come to burn 167 mil­lion Aus­tri­an Schillings in Brazil? On a mad tour, qujOchÖ presents the sto­ries and tac­tics of the trick­sters of finan­cial capitalism.

Beyond moral fin­ger-wag­ging and sim­ply pil­lo­ry­ing trick­sters, qujOchÖ has come up with a demon­stra­tive ges­ture that cre­ates a field of ten­sion with tricky finan­cial spec­u­la­tions. Fol­low­ing indepth dis­cus­sion, the art col­lec­tive has decid­ed to mul­ti­ply the pro­duc­tion bud­get pro­vid­ed by steirisch­er herb­st with as lit­tle spec­u­la­tion as pos­si­ble. But what would be more obvi­ous than to take a typ­i­cal­ly Aus­tri­an approach to this? As a rem­i­nis­cence of the sup­pos­ed­ly good old times, qujOchÖ there­fore deposit­ed the pro­duc­tion bud­get of €16.576,03 in a sav­ings account. A fixed inter­est rate of 4.185 % for 100 years was nego­ti­at­ed with Steier­märkische Sparkasse. The final cap­i­tal includ­ing inter­est there­fore amounts to exact­ly €1.000.000,30. The sav­ings book was trans­ferred to steirisch­er herb­st by deed of gift on con­di­tion that the mon­ey is not accessed before the 100 years have expired. As an addi­tion­al guar­an­tee, the sav­ings book is deposit­ed with a notary pub­lic for this period.

www.steirischerherbst.at
vimeo.com/13528636

(Pho­tos: Wolf­gang Sil­veri, Anni­ka Strass­mair, qujOchÖ)

Video of Wern­er Rydl’s burn­ing action on the beach of Recife in March 2002
(Video/Editing: Wern­er Rydl/Rainer Dechet)

Video of the inter­view with Wern­er Rydl on June 5 2010
(Video/Editing: qujOchÖ)

Video of the exhi­bi­tion open­ing on Sep­tem­ber 25 2010
(Video/Editing: qujOchÖ)

[audio:https://archive.org/download/DAS_GROSSE_MANOEVER1_OE1_Kulturjournal_27_09_2010_Part_1/DAS_GROSSE_MANO%cc%88VER_O%cc%881_Kulturjournal_27_09_2010_Part_1.mp3]

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[audio:https://archive.org/download/DAS_GROSSE_MANOEVER1_OE1_Kulturjournal_27_09_2010_Part_1/DAS_GROSSE_MANO%cc%88VER_O%cc%881_Kulturjournal_27_09_2010_Part_2.mp3]

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