Capitalism works for me

So, in Liverpool we have an arty-farty building known as FACT (Foundation for Art and Creative Technology).

It’s one of those places where things get exhibited that not even the Tate Modern would bother with.  And, of course, the, ahem, ‘artists’ walk away with a handsome payment for whatever installation they’ve dreamed up.

Personally, places like this annoy me.  Funding into ‘arts’ which quite obviously aren’t artistic pisses me off. 99% of the stuff in FACT pisses me off.  Hell, man there are little old ladies relying on food banks, and preparing for a winter of shivering, and yet the pointless projects still get their funding.

Anyway, there was this ‘installation’ called ‘Capitalism works for me, true or false’.  The big flashy lighting display included allegedly changing ‘votes’.  At various points in FACT there were large boxes with true and false buttons on them.  Supposedly every 30 seconds one could vote on the motion ‘In my life Capitalism works for me’.  The result would then display in the big flashy lighting display thing.

Well, I looked at the totals, 362 saying true but only 4 saying false and I thought that it didn’t quite make sense.  I mean, the installation was in a place where most patrons are already hard wired to hate capitalism with actual bile and foam appearing around their mouths at the very thought.  So, how come the ‘false’ vote was so low?

I pressed a vote button to add to the ‘false’ tally.  Nothing happened.  3 minutes later (not the advertised 30 seconds) it allowed another vote.  This time I voted ‘true’ and this time the ‘true’ tally went up.

So what’s that about?  Is that the ‘trick’?  Is this the type of exhibition installation I would design to piss the lefties off?  Is this what it was all about?

Or maybe it was broken.

I mean, the alternative reality is that the whole thing was designed to make the lefties frequenting the place throw themselves through the plate glass windows or something, as they discover to their horror the support that capitalism actually has.  I like this installation.

I didn’t hang around to check for any squishes of bodily fluids from where attempts had been made to jump.  I had been in FACT for far too long and could feel the sweat on my neck, and my need for fresh air away from crap art that makes so much money for so few.  I left. But it’s been on my mind ever since.