DV [PAL]
Block Monitor
4:3; audio, colour
3min 48 sec
In the financial world “after the bell” refers to the activities that take place after the stock exchange has closed. Charles uses the term to refer to night workers who begin their working day precisely when the stockbrokers leave their offices.
This video, made in the Canary Wharf financial district in London after the 2008 crisis, looks at the central places where financial transactions are made, but at night, when productivity drops and the actors who perform in the market have left. The artist seems to want to explore two kinds of invisibility: that of these night workers and that of monetary exchanges that have no physical existence. Although the presence of these workers is marginal, it is fundamental for the proper functioning of the global economy and it underlines a broader problem: the inextricable link between local and global. The productivity of one group of workers affects the productivity of others.
The artist places herself in a voyeuristic position, looking through the windows of the skyscrapers and observing the bodies of workers carrying out almost imperceptible performative actions. These aseptic, technological towers of glass and steel have become the embodiment of modern capitalism, the seats of financial power.
2009
Catalogue text by Marta Ponsa for exhibition ‘Supermarket of Images’, Jeu de Paume, 2020
Installation view, CAPITAL, George and Jorgen Gallery, London, 2012