[p2p-research] Fwd: [Newsletter] New film “Socialism Failed, Capitalism is Bankrupt. What comes Next?”

[Michel Bauwens]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Oliver Ressler <oliver at ressler.at>
Date: Sat, Oct 30, 2010 at 10:33 PM
Subject: [Newsletter] New film “Socialism Failed, Capitalism is Bankrupt.
What comes Next?”
To: newsletter at ressler.at


SOCIALISM FAILED, CAPITALISM IS BANKRUPT. WHAT COMES NEXT?

A project by Oliver Ressler


The project “Socialism Failed, Capitalism is Bankrupt. What comes Next?”
focuses on the political and economic situation in the Republic of
Armenia, one of the successor states of the Soviet Union. The project
materializes in two different formats: The short film, “Socialism
Failed, Capitalism is Bankrupt. What comes Next?” (19 min., 2010), and a
2-channel video installation that will be accomplished by a photo-based
floor piece.

The film “Socialism Failed, Capitalism is Bankrupt. What comes Next?”
was recorded in summer 2010 in Yerevan’s largest bazaar, called
“Bangladesh”. Every day more than 1000 people try to survive as traders
in the “Bangladesh” bazaar, where an average vendor does not earn more
than 100 to 250 Euros per month. In the film, the market’s traders talk
about their struggles to survive during crises in a post-socialist state
that closed most Soviet-era factories and dissolved social safety nets.
The market’s traders, primarily former factory-workers, describe how
their living conditions worsened after the end of the Soviet Union; they
speak about their hopes and expectations for social change. While they
live in misery, a small but highly influential class of corrupt
politicians and super-rich oligarchs team up with international
corporations in order to fill their pockets with profits from
transferring state property and licenses for mining.

A former mathematics professor Levon Yeremyan, who now survives by
trading in the “Bangladesh” bazaar, notes, “95 per cent of people work
and get the minimum wage, which is ridiculously low by European
standards, and 5 per cent live like Arab sheikhs.” Most people would
definitely agree with his description of the wide gap between the
impoverished masses and the oligarchs in Armenia. This deep divide
contradicts the official flattering data.
The project also produced a photo-based floor piece with three-meter
diameter in the shape of Armenia; the floor piece provides an
illustration of this extremely uneven distribution of wealth.

In the 2-channel video installation, the “Bangladesh” video is combined
with a (silent) video, which focuses on former Soviet factories in
Yerevan that were shut down or produce at reduced capacity or were
transformed into something else. Each factory was filmed with a single
shot of 20 seconds, followed by information that includes the factory’s
name, what it produced, when it closed, the current owner and the new
utilization.


Concept, camera, sound recording, video editing and production: Oliver
Ressler
Interviews, translation and editing assistance: Arpineh Galfayan
Audio mix and color correction: Rudi Gottsberger
Research on factories: Nora Galfayan, Vahe Budumyan

The project was done during a residency in Yerevan in the framework of
the project “Eat and Work” by Utopiana, supported by BM:UKK.



First film screening:

Museum on the Seam, Jerusalem (IL), http://www.mots.org.il
In the framework of a presentation by Oliver Ressler in the exhibition
“The Right to Protest”, November 2, 2010, at 7 pm


Check out the film online at http://www.ressler.at/socialism_failed/






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