shadow growth
DISNOVATION.ORG
Shadow-Growth is the latest work in an ongoing series entitled Post-Growth by the French artist collective Disnovation.org and the Canadian filmmaker, curator, and critic Baruch Gottlieb.
Both have an impressive track record of critically engaged art that is often interventionist and edgy. Disnovation.org created works about pirate cinema, Big Tech surveillance, online culture wars, censorship, and more.
Gottlieb is known for his part in Telekommunisten, a radical artist-activist group, and his ongoing curatorial work at the art gallery West in Den Haag. Disnovation.org + Gottlieb’s Post-Growth project invites us to challenge the dominant narratives about economic growth and progress.
For Shadow Growth, the artists use counter-visualization techniques to contest how economic growth is perceived and calculated. Shadow growth refers to costs standard Western economists don’t find worthy of mentioning, such as underpaid labor and environmental costs.
The upward arrow often used in economic growth graphics casts a shadow, translated into an actual shadow the artists create on the museum floor. Shadow Growth contains several layers of engagement and information.
The artists invite the audience to take a poster explaining the concept of economic shadow growth and to help rethink and reform practices of production and consumption.
