The Price of a Spectacle

Year: 2008
Type: 2-channel video installation
Duration: 00:35:45 / 00:22:13
See the single channel version of the video

One of the biggest spectacles of the year 2008 was the Olympic Games in Beijing. China invested 33 million Euros in the construction of new Olympic venues and the beautification of the city, thus making the 2008 games the most expensive ones ever. But what was the real price paid by impoverished citizens? One-and-a-half-million residents of ancient Chinese residential districts called Hutongs were evicted from their homes and left homeless.

The video installation consists of 2 videos projected from each side to a non-transparent screen suspended from a ceiling. The form is a visualization of the well-known saying, “There are two sides to every coin”. The bright side or the spectacle is represented by parts of the opening ceremony and official promotional videos. The dark side or the cost is represented by a mix of documentary TV footage of Hutong residents and their stories and amateur footage of brutal evictions from youtube.com.

The video below: an installation view from the exhibition Necessary Discourse on Hysteria in Koroška galerija likovnih umetnosti Slovenj Gradec / The Gallery of Fine Arts Slovenj Gradec in Slovenia in 2008.