The Way Earthly Things Are Going, 2017, is an immersive soundscape which sets an LED strip of real-time market data from the stock indices against an ancient polyphonic Greek lamentation. Ogboh’s sensory room provides a space of inescapable contemplation of the audio versus the visual, juxtaposing the interrupted lives of migrants against the never-ceasing churn of the capital market; the loss amidst the gain. With a title taken from a line in Bob Marley’s well-known song “So Much Trouble in the World,” this multi-channel sound installation extrapolates how capitalism disengages itself from personal tragedies. While created for documenta 14 in Athens, 2017, and specifically focused on the Greek economic crisis as a subject, The Way Earthly Things Are Going is a timeless interrogation of societal inequity.

In his essay on the work for Documenta 14, curator and writer Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung writes, “In The Way Earthly Things Are Going, 2017, Ogboh, in dialogue with a traditional polyphonic choir, deliberates sonically on the multiple effects and manifestations of states of crisis. The enchanting sound installation addresses the (im-)possibility of existing in a cul-de-sac; it tells of wanderlust and yearning, of pain and a survival urge, and it features comments on and impressions of an economic crisis that has plagued and is still ravaging.”

Public Collections
Edition 1: Tate Modern, London, United Kingdom