Tours

After the positive reception of its last tours in Madrid and Belgrade, the Artbus extends its activities to New York. Coinciding with "Williamsburg Every2ndFriday" openings and special events, the Artbus will provide complimentary shuttles from Chelsea to Brooklyn and will offer guided tours across several galleries and non-profit spaces in Williamsburg, on Friday December 14. During the ride, the Artbus will host a program of video screenings with the title "Outsourcing. The Invisible Hand", which will showcase some of the most socially committed international artistic positions, examining the liberal economy utopia from different perspectives

Shuttles will depart from the Chelsea Art Museum (556 West 22nd) at 6 and 8 pm, and will make three stops at Driggs Ave. & N. 9th St, Metropolitan Avenue & Roebling and (Pierogi, Jack the Pellican, Parker's Box, Front Room among other galleries) and 49 Bogart St. (Ad Hoc Art & Pocket Utopia). After parties will follow at Oulu (160 North 4th Street, btw. Bedford and Driggs, from 9-11 pm) and Monkey Town (58 N 3rd St, btw. Kent & Wythe, from 11 pm), where video screenings for tireless gallery-goers will continue till late. Shuttles back to Manhattan will depart at 10:30 pm from Oulu Bar and 12:30 am from Monkey Town.

PLEASE NOTE SEATS ARE LIMITED. RSVP AT info@art-bus.com

Video Screenings: Outsourcing. The Invisible Hand

Artists: Alterazioni Video, Carlos Amorales, Chen Chieh-Jen, Democracia, Ruth Gómez, Aníbal López A-1 53167, Ciprian Muresan, Iván Navarro, Yoshua Okón, Reiningungsgesellschaft, Nedko Solakov

Outsourcing comprises a selection of videos by international artists examining the liberal economy utopia from different perspectives. The videos showcased in this program represent a critical and engaged insight into the principles, peripheries and often forgotten effects of the miraculous liberal model. Combining the hectic rhythm and aesthetics of spots and music videos, performance documentary and film archive footage, the artists included in this program address the fears, indifference, violence and exploitation that liberal strategies such as "Outsourcing" provoke and leave spitefully unobserved.

As their impellers emphasize, liberalization processes implemented during the last decades have resulted in an unprecedented economic growth. Opposite to previous planned economies, liberal recipes implemented globally have proved their miraculous effects in so diverse countries such as Chile, Spain and China. The forces of free markets, described by Adam Smith as an "Invisible Hand" revealed being far more efficient than the State bureaucracy managing economic resources. As their defendants point out incessantly, free markets and open trade have achieved to increase wealth and reduce unemployment to unimaginable rates.

But at the same time as the extraordinary statistics generated by "The invisible hand" are repeated endlessly, their most perverse effects vanish as with magic's sake. As in a fantastic trick, the illusions created by the consumerist spectacle hide the most uncomfortable aspects of reality behind a smoke cloud. As even über-speculator George Soros observes, purely transactional approach to economic activity is in danger of undermining social values and loosening moral constraints. Markets stage then, as in the most eloquent Darwinist scenario, a ruthless struggle for survival, where only the fittest survive, where the weak are crushed and eliminated. Expelled to the margins of the scene, and silenced by the media pyrotechnics, the misery and exploitation generated by the most ruthless liberalism vanish before our eyes. And with them fades away any sort of responsibility.