Projects: Anne Katrine Senstad

Anne Katrine Senstad
* 1967 Oslo, Norway. Lives in New York, USA.

Gold Guides Me
Location: Pakhuizen
Entrance via Wulpenstraat
20 May - 18 October 2015

Our cities are showcases for capitalism. Advertising, trade, real estate, mass tourism, banks and big business etc. all use the city for the purpose of their manifestation. They claim the public space with signs, pictures and architecture. En masse and unrelenting.

The Norwegian artist Anne K. Senstad studies how all this affects us. How do we cope with this flood? All these impulses that demand interaction, consumption. Those that are blatantly visible but also those that are more subcutaneous, digital and virtual.

At the same time we cannot deny that our cities were once intended to organise exchanges and trade, transport and production. Waterways connect them to other cities.

But what does this capitalism, this city gene mean for our cities of tomorrow? How can we transcend our role of consumer? What will constitute the city of tomorrow's cultural, social and political fabric? What will our role be as individuals, citizens and neighbours?

What ethics can the city of tomorrow generate when we see how the city is increasingly becoming a type of capital in itself? Rising property prices scare off less affluent residents. Speculation leads to financial bubbles and even an economic debacle... And cities are becoming increasingly defined in prices per square metre. These are the greatest forces that are restructuring our cities today.

Against this background Anne K. Senstad projects a word sculpture on to the historic building of the Pakhuizen (Warehouses). Gold Guides Me is a play on words with a financial and religious connotation. Like an advertising slogan that makes God and Gold one and the same higher force. The free market is the universal fetish to which we all bow, which we worship for wealth and possessions.

(© Text: Walking Guide, Bruges Triennial 2015)