MoMA Presents PROJECTS 97: MARK BOULOS, 3/19

The Museum of Modern Art presents Projects 97: Mark Boulos, the New York premiere of the artist's video installation All That Is Solid Melts into Air (2008), on view March 19 through July 16, 2012.

In his documentary video installations, Mark Boulos (b. 1975, United States) investigates the space between abstract concepts and material reality. The two-channel video installation All That Is Solid Melts into Air juxtaposes two communities at opposite ends of the world, each struggling to control petroleum. One video depicts floor brokers in the Chicago Mercantile Exchange trading petroleum contracts during the first days of the financial crisis in 2008. The other presents footage from the artist's experience living among Nigerian fishermen, members of the militant organization Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND), who live in one of the largest oil fields in the world. Fighting to alleviate the poverty of the population, the guerilla group violently battles the exploitation of the natural environment.

The conflict between the guerillas and national government, which benefits from its contracts with international corporations, has escalated over the past few decades. Simultaneously, the local residents compete for the resource by seizing it directly from pipelines. For the brokers, on the other hand, who never see or touch the substance, oil is a virtual commodity with quasi-mystical properties. Inspired by the potential for a more equal distribution of the world's wealth, Boulos has titled the installation after a passage from the Communist Manifesto (1848), by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, in which the authors condemn the capitalist system and its detrimental effects on the working class and social relations at large.

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