This website was part of our contribution to the Hailweed exhibition which took place at Auto Italia South East (London) in June 2016.

On June 23, the UK voted about staying or leaving the European Union. In the days leading to the refereundum many professionals voiced concern of a possible depreciation of the Pound and the possibility that international banks might leave London without being able to point to a city where to book financial trade instead. Others predicted that “the City” will be given way for further liberalisation of the market once freed from the constraints of EU regulations. Either way, both sides seem more concerned with the wellbeing of businesses rather than that of humans. Over all these questions, the City of London Corporation looms large. The interests of “the City” are constantly debated and negotiated. But what is this mysterious entity, a symbolic relic preserved out of custom or, rather a 21st century world-city contrived for global financial elite?

Chimerical sovereignties and void authorities are emblematic of a post-representational, post-democratic political age. This is a politics increasingly populated by proxies, and spread across an archipelago dotted by trade zones and demarcated by informal jurisdictions. The City of London Corporation embodies many of these phenomena. Hidden in plain sight and donned in a medieval like incessant LARP (live action role play), the city has been symbolically re-erected in Auto Italia’s new exhibition space in the guise of six spectral bells.

Nowadays, the protocols of wielding global power are increasingly subterranean, but for centuries bells have been the main means of telling and tolling time, and thus, of excreting power. (John Durham Peters).

Installation Research Center for Proxy Politics
Texts Brian Holmes, Doreen Mende, Robert Rapoport, Research Center for Proxy Politics, Hito Steyerl
Bot thricedotted
Meshnet design PWR
Sound design Gediminas Žygus (J.G. Biberkopf)
Thank you Philipp Borgers (Freifunk Berlin), Laura Preston, Nina Wiesnagrotzki