We feed the Idiots

Ingo Ran­dolf feat. qujOchÖ (AUT) ///

Open­ing: Wed, April 11 2007, 17:00 /// 
Exhi­bi­tion: Thu, April 12 — Wed, May 16 2007 ///
quitch, Untere Donaulände 10, Linz ///

Brave new world is one big gam­ble. In the end those who have already won enough win once more — the “big play­ers”, the multi­na­tion­al cor­po­ra­tions and soci­eties. 500 of them con­trol more than 52 per cent of the gross world prod­uct. The sta­bi­liza­tion of this con­cen­tra­tion of eco­nom­ic pow­er is based in part on the fact that the cap­i­tal­ist machine knows how to keep alive by using diverse mech­a­nisms that lie beyond the view of the individual.

WE FEED THE IDIOTS is work­ing with this with­draw­al of the mech­a­nisms of cap­i­tal­ism. An inter­ac­tive instal­la­tion presents in the win­dow of the quitch an inter­face. An invest­ment of 10 cents promis­es the pass­er-by – in the case of luck­i­ness — that they can then be account­ed for as win­ners of mod­ern­iza­tion. The usu­al slot machine requires three sym­bols of the same kind in order to win. WE FEED THE IDIOTS does not use the usu­al fruit sym­bols, but cor­po­rate logos of cor­po­ra­tions and com­pa­nies such as the World Bank, Unilever and BP.

In the event that three of these logos show up the gam­bler won‘t be returned the 10 cents but is draft­ed by the cap­i­tal­ist machine. At the end of every day indi­vid­ual trans­fers of 10 cents for every lost game are made each with the sub­ject WE FEED THE IDIOTS to the cor­po­ra­tions and com­pa­nies that are used as icons. The cor­re­spon­dence that evolved out of this as well as all the doc­u­ments of the trans­fers are shown in public.