A Modest Proposal (in a Black Box)

Publication of the text A Modest Proposal (in a Black Box) by Katleen Vermeir & Ronny Heiremans and a link to their video essay for the ‘ Cinéma et spéculation financière’ issue of Images secondes – cinéma & sciences humaines

The fifth issue of the journal Images secondes sets out to document the ways in which financial flows affect the physical and social world through the production of images, and how, conversely, other images, particularly filmic images, crystallise financial flows – fuelling them, freezing them in figures or, at least fictitiously, disrupting their principles. These images thus appear as mediations between several orders: the virtual order of the financial and speculative planet, the material order of social crises and events affecting people’s lives, and the fictitious order of the inventions – also ‘speculative’ in their own way – of concepts and works designed to make the opaque (dys)functionalities of the financial market visible. By analysing how finance is embodied as a social, technical, mediated and figurative fact in cinema and the moving image arts, the fifteen contributions brought together in this issue seek to question speculation as a process of image creation.

Artist duo Vermeir & Heiremans introduce their film A Modest Proposal, in which they focus on the question if financialisation can be re-purposed towards generating a more equitable arts ecology in which not only investors but also the creators of art assets’ value, the artists and art workers, benefit. Their contribution also elaborates on two Victorian era archival documents that inspired the making of their film. The documents highlight a moment of accelerated speculation on land in Battersea, the location in London were the artists’ film was being shot in 2018. At that time a speculative frenzy unfolded around Battersea Power Station’s transformation into a star architect’s designed luxury development.

Main page of the issue (in French)

Introduction to the issue by Occitane Lacurie & Barnabé Sauvage (in French)

Read the text: A Modest Proposal (full English and French versions)