Exhibition: Primitive Accumulation

Friday May 27th-June 30th, 2011

Curated by Arne De Boever and Dan Davis

FOLD Gallery London is pleased to present a group show celebrating the first two years of http://www.PRIMITIVEACCUMULATION.com, an online collaboration between artist Dan Davis and literary critic and critical theorist Arne De Boever. Although the project initially recorded only work by its founders, it gradually began to include works by other artists as well, leading the process of accumulation to intensify until the point of its destruction. In the midst of an emergency situation that is both political and economic, Primitive Accumulation aims to stage a dialogue between artworks and texts that would empower audiences to not simply face up to the challenges of their times, but to generate works in response.

Primitive Accumulation was launched some time in the Fall of 2009 as a means to record the creative collaborations between artist Dan Davis and critic Arne De Boever, as well as a few of their friends. In the midst of an emergency situation that is both political and economic, the blog aims to stage a dialogue between images and texts that would empower viewers and readers to not simply face up to the challenges of their times, but to generate new works in response to them. Our philosophy is that crisis is not a problem, but should be embraced as the source of new aesthetic, ethical, and political possibilities. So far, the images on the site have ranged from scratchboard drawings, to pencil and India ink on paper, to digital images; the texts have addressed key questions in ethical and political thought from Ancient Greece to the present. Although initially, the blog will only record work by its founders, our aim is to include, little by little, works by other artists and writers so as to intensify the process of creative accumulation until the point of its destruction, when the blog will burst out of its frame and the virtual accumulation it has staged will take over reality. After this break has occurred, the works featured on Primitive Accumulation will be gathered for a show at a gallery in London, where a self-published book with images and texts from the site will be launched.

http://www.primitiveaccumulation.com/

Article: ‘From financial crisis to world slump: accumulation, financialization, and the global slowdown’

David McNally, ‘From financial crisis to world slump: accumulation, financialization, and the global slowdown’, Marx and the Financial Crisis of 2008, December 2008

As the International Monetary Fund observed some months ago, we are living through “the largest financial crisis in the United States since the Great Depression.” But that was to understate things in two ways. First, the financial crisis is no longer largely about the US. It has gone global, rocking the UK, the Eurozone, Japan, and the so-called “emerging market economies.” A wave of devastating national and regional crises is just getting started, having already hit Iceland, Hungary, the Ukraine, and Pakistan. Secondly, this is no longer simply a financial crisis; a global economic slump is now sweeping through the so-called “real economy,” hammering the construction, auto and consumer goods sectors, and clobbering growth rates in China and India. Manufacturing output is sharply down in the US, Europe, Japan and China. The Detroit Three automakers, reeling from losses of $28.6 billion in the first half of this year, are teetering on the verge of collapse. World trade is in a stunning free fall.

Download the PDF: http://sites.google.com/site/marxandthefinancialcrisis/mcnallydec2008/McNallyDec2008rev.pdf?attredirects=0