KAPITALISMUS DUETT, 2006
audioinstallation
2 wooden stairs, MP3-Player, loudspeaker, contact-mats, red carpet
Sound: 2 film speeches as morse sounds in two different tone pitchs („Network“, 1976 und „Wallstreet“, 1987)

Beate Engl
Two wooden pedestals are presented across from each other connected through a long red carpet. Once you step on the pedestal a contact mat under the carpet releases the sound of a morse tone. The opposite pedestal has a different tone, so that two users create a chord melody in the exhibition space. The morse sound is based on two different movie speeches about capitalism, greed and money.



Beate Engl

Speech from „Network“ (1976) with Ned Beatty as Arthur Jensen
„ ... You are an old man who thinks in terms of nations and peoples. There are no nations. There are no peoples. There are no Russians. There are no Arabs. There are no third worlds. There is no West. There is only one holistic system of systems, one vast and immane, interwoven, interacting, multivariate, multi-national dominion of dollars. Petro-dollars, electro-dollars, multi-dollars, reichmarks, rins, rubles, pounds, and shekels.
It is the international system of currency which determines the totality of life on this planet. That is the natural order of things today. That is the atomic and subatomic and galactic structure of things today! And YOU have meddled with the primal forces of nature, and you will atone!
... We no longer live in a world of nations and ideologies, Mr. Beale. The world is a college of corporations, inexorably determined by the immutable bylaws of business. The world is a business, Mr. Beale. It has been since man crawled out of the slime. And our children will live, Mr. Beale, to see that perfect world in which there‘s no war or famine, oppression or brutality -- one vast and ecumenical holding company, for whom all men will work to serve a common profit, in which all men will hold a share of stock, all necessities provided, all anxieties tranquilized, all boredom amused."

Speech from “Wallstreet” (1987) with Michael Douglas as Gordon Gekko
„... America, America has become a second-rate power. Its trade deficit and its fiscal deficit are at nightmare proportions. Now, in the days of the free market, when our country was a top industrial power, there was accountability to the stockholder. The Carnegies, the Mellons, the men that built this great industrial empire, made sure of it because it was their money at stake. Today, management has no stake in the company!
... I am not a destroyer of companies. I am a liberator of them! The point is, ladies and gentleman, that greed -- for lack of a better word -- is good. Greed is right. Greed works. Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit. Greed, in all of its forms -- greed for life, for money, for love, knowledge -- has marked the upward surge of mankind. And greed -- you mark my words -- will not only save Teldar Paper, but that other malfunctioning corporation called the USA.
Thank you very much.“