What happens when social scientists write about artworks? How does it affect the academic environment of a business school and how does it change the perception of art? Can it be used as a novel scientific method in the business studies?
This book investigates these matters by analyzing Goldin+Senneby's retrospective exhibition “Standard Length of a Miracle” set up in Tensta konsthall and multiple other venues in Stockholm in the spring of 2016.
Pierre Guillet de Monthoux and Erik Wikberg define the concept of Economic Ekphrasis as “a literary description of or commentary on a visual work of art as a research-educational method in the social and economic sciences.” While the use of ekphrases goes back to ancient times in our Western literary canon and practiced by authors such as Homer, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Charlotte Brontë, and Oscar Wilde, it is new and unexplored territory for social scientists at business schools. An easy way to understand how to write literary ekphrases in its original meaning would be to ask a seeing person to describe in words a visual artwork to someone who is blind. Economic ekphrasis instead is about describing artworks for people who are blind to economic concepts and ideas, making them see what they did not see before.
Goldin+Senneby is a framework for collaboration set up by Stockholm-based artists Simon Goldin and Jakob Senneby in 2004; Together they explore juridical,
financial and spatial constructs through notions of the performative and the virtual. Their collaboration started with
The Port (2004-06); acting in an emerging public sphere constructed through digital code. In their more recent body of work, known as
Headless (2007 -), they approach the sphere of offshore finance, and its production of virtual space through legal code. Looking at strategies of withdrawal and secrecy, they trace an offshore company on the Bahamas called Headless Ltd. A ghostwritten detective novel continuously narrates their investigations. Since 2010 their work has focused on The Nordenskiöld Model, an experiment in theatrical finance, in which they attempt to (re)enact the anarcho-alchemical scheme of 18th century alchemist August Nordenskiöld on the financial markets of today.
Solo exhibitions include: “M&A”, Artspace NZ, Auckland (2013); “I dispense, divide, assign, keep, hold” NAK, Aachen (2012); “Standard Length of a Miracle”, CAC, Vilnius (2011); “The Decapitation of Money”, Kadist, Paris (2010); “Headless. From the public record”, Index, Stockholm (2009); “Goldin+Senneby: Headless”, The Power Plant, Toronto (2008). Group exhibitions include: “Art Turning Left”, Tate Liverpool (2013); “Mom, am I barbarian?”, 13th Istanbul Biennial (2013); “The Deep of the Modern”, Manifesta 9, Genk (2012); “The End of Money”, Witte de With, Rotterdam (2011); “The Moderna Exhibition”, Moderna Museet, Stockholm (2010); “Uneven Geographies”, Nottingham Contemporary (2010); “In living contact”, 28:th Bienal de Sao Paulo (2008). Residencies include: Headlands, San Francisco (2012); SALT, Istanbul (2012); Kadist, Paris (2010); Gasworks, London (2008); IASPIS, Stockholm (2007).
See also
K. D. : Headless.
