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EMEKA OGBOH, The Way Earthly Things Are Going, 2017
EMEKA OGBOH, The Way Earthly Things Are Going, 2017
EMEKA OGBOH, The Way Earthly Things Are Going, 2017
EMEKA OGBOH, The Way Earthly Things Are Going, 2017
EMEKA OGBOH, The Way Earthly Things Are Going, 2017
EMEKA OGBOH, The Way Earthly Things Are Going, 2017
EMEKA OGBOH, The Way Earthly Things Are Going, 2017
EMEKA OGBOH, The Way Earthly Things Are Going, 2017
EMEKA OGBOH, The Way Earthly Things Are Going, 2017

The Way Earthly Things Are Going, 2017

Multichannel sound installation, the traditional polyphonic song "When I forget, I’m glad" from Epirus, Greece, and realtime LED display of world stock indexes
Dimensions variable
Duration: 9 min and 27 sec
Edition of 3 plus 1 artist's proof
€ 160,000.00

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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....
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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
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Exhibitions

Documenta 14, Athens, Apr 8, 2017–Sep 17, 2017
Tate Modern, The Tanks, London, December 2017–February 2018
Horst Music and Arts Festival, Brussels, September 3–15, 2019
Kunstmuseum Ravensburg, October 17, 2020–February 7, 2021
Zeiss Major Planetarium, Berlin Art Week, September 18–19, 2021
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