| Marx 2000 |
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With its MARX 2000 exhibition, Neuchâtel's Museum of Ethnography (MEN) takes a critical look at the ultraliberal capitalist society as it stands at the close of this century. The series of characters covering Karl Marx's face on the poster represents a DNA sequence as it would be stored in a data bank. This sequence contains the gene which encodes the bovine somatotropine protein (BST), a growth hormone produced through cloning and injected into cows in order to increase their milk yield. The superimposition of
the author of «Das Kapital» and a DNA sequence suggests that nothing escapes the market
anymore, and that chosing what sells best inexorably marginalises that which sells badly
or not at all. |
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Developing this line of argument, the MEN starts off with a presentation of historical debris such as traditional agriculture, the iron and steel industry, printing and idealogical conflicts. Abandoned before as if they came from a dried up source or were stored randomly as remnants of a not so distant past where they used to belong, relics from these various sectors are today being recycled by the system on a more idealised and nostalgic level. Having undergone various modifications both in appearance and in meaning they are put back on the market with a second lease of life, evoking or even revitalising a bygone era. The presentation then moves onto more luxurious surroundings, representing the markets at the leading edge associated with the human body, genetic engineering, technology or informatics. It develops the idea that neither anything nor anyone can escape selling, catalogues or patenting. By means of a central section, dedicated to money, the exhibition suggests that the entire planet is subject to the following rule: to achieve maximum profit no matter how or with what as fast as possible. After revealing a few aspects of Marx's life, an underlying theme throughout the various sections of the exhibition, the MEN confronts the visitor with the violence of a social competition which produces its fair share of winners and losers. Perceiving what is at stake behind the laboratory walls, the exhibition concludes with a not all that glorious vision of the future, in which the systematic practice of cloning, eugenics and serialisation could sweep our societies towards a new type of totalitarianism.
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