This work elaborates on some of the undercurrents present in recent discourse in media and within financial institutions around restructuring the global economy in light of the "asian meltdown," etc. These undercurrents, drawn out to their extremes in the installation, include an almost inexpressible fear of social unrest, and a remarkable appropriation of the language of social justice, which becomes a clever guise for capitlaist self-preservation.

click to read texts
The piece is dominated by two texts. On the left, facing the storefront, a short party-line text in the style of the Chinese Communist Party totalitarianizes the discourses of economic restructuring. The text is blatantly propagandistic and forced with good feeling and inspiring proclamation. On the right, a longer text, written in the voice of the upper-echelon capitalists, addresses the general public with an admission of failure and exhaustion, and concludes with a request to be put out of their misery. The language of self-preservation becomes a request for mercy killing. Below these texts is a sequence of photographs and a narrative text which moves from an optimism about the present state of global affairs to despair and desperation.