ORDER Act. I Eat the Rich — Kill the poor — Democracia

ORDER Act. I Eat the Rich – Kill the poor, on display at Recontemporary until October 26, by the Spanish collective DEMOCRACIA, composed of artists Pablo España and Ivàn López, is a denunciation of the profound imbalance of contemporary society. The video work, lasting about 70 minutes, is a wild evisceration of the iniquity of the capitalist system, extracted from different sources and inspirations, such as historical episodes of struggle against oppression, lyrics of punk songs, poems of the Ancient Greeks. The video is composed of three acts, as if they were three films, which describe the history of oppressed and oppressors in a system that does not keep the promises of social mobility and meritocracy, making the rich richer and the poor poorer. The I ACT Eat the Rich – Kill the Poor focuses on the journey of a Hummer limousine through the streets of Houston, passing through the industrial areas and the large skyscrapers of the business center of the Texas city. The limousine journey highlights how the city’s urban development separates its inhabitants according to income and social class.

A loudspeaker broadcasts a song from inside the limousine: the singer is Amanda, a rich and elegant heiress, who represents the privileged class. In the background, the limousine passes through a demonstration of the Huey P. Newton Gun Club, a firearms club dedicated to the founder of the revolutionary Black Panther movement. The demonstrators claim the personal possession of weapons as an act of defense following the many cases of police aggression against African-American black communities. The II ACT, entitled Konsumentenchor explores the dynamics of contemporary consumerism and its innate drive to devour and exhaust beyond any consequence, to the point of environmental and ecological cataclysm. The protagonist of this act declares the dawn of a new era: “In recent days, we have had our hands and feet tied, but we have regained freedom”. In the final ACT III, entitled dinner at the Dorchester, we witness the definitive confrontation between the incarnation of ruthless capitalism, which celebrates itself with its events of pomp and wealth, and a courageous and indignant waitress. The waitress, who in her being a woman, black and poor, embodies the degrading reality of the subaltern classes, shouts: “Your order is chaos” and declares “upon this chaos I will build my house”. Ultimately, what ORDER Act. I Eat the Rich – Kill the poor offers the viewer is not only the social dis-organization of Houston but the living image of a decadent capitalism through the points of view of those who suffer and those who benefit from suffering within the system on a global scale.