Museum of Capitalism
Museum of Capitalism is a project conceived by FICTILIS taking the form of a public museum that treats capitalism as a historical phenomenon. This speculative institution views the present and recent past from the implied perspective of a society in which the current economic and political system is memorialized in a manner similar to (the Museums of) Communism, Apartheid, etc. Using this conceit, and a variety of formats—primarily exhibition, installation, performance, and publication—the museum provides a dynamic context for a growing body of work exploring the intersections of economic issues with those of race, gender, and environment, while engaging directly with the contemporary crisis in political imagination that makes it “easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism.”
Suggesting that capitalism’s compounding crises have demonstrated the inevitability of its eventual end and its worthiness for the kind of reflection and remembrance that a museum would evoke, the project invites audiences to inhabit an indeterminate, imaginary future in order to better recognize the historical specificity, idiosyncrasy, and contingency of the present. The museum performs the role of a public institution, in an attempt to reach broad audiences and become a platform for critical dialogue and civic engagement around some of the most pressing questions of our time.
The Museum has hosted exhibitions in Oakland, CA (2017), Boston, MA (2018), New York (2019)
museumofcapitalism.org // with Timothy Furstnau and many others // photos of the Oakland exhibiton by Cinque Mubarak
