If You’re So Smart, Why Ain’t You Rich? 

On the Economics of Knowledge

February 28 – March 22, 2014

An Official Parallel Project of the 5th Marrakech Biennale

ESAV Marrakech (l’École Supérieure des Arts Visuels de Marrakech)

Curators: Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung (CM), Pauline Doutreluingne (BE)

Initiated by SAVVY Contemporary and Neuer Berliner Kunstverein (n.b.k.), the research and exhibition project “Giving Contours To Shadows” embarks with its first satellite project If You’re So Smart, Why Ain’t You Rich? in the framework of the 5th Marrakech Biennale. The exhibition brings together twelve international artists working primarily with sound installations that thematize the tug of war between the cognitive, intellectual and the economic / financial capital. If You’re So Smart, Why Ain’t You Rich? explores how sound becomes haptic, tactile and textural in arts, society, politics and economy.

If You’re So Smart, Why Ain’t You Rich? is first and foremost an exhibition project that pays tribute to the artist Julius Eastman, who did not shy away from art as a medium of political expression, and secondly a project that questions through artistic reflection the place and confluence of knowledge and economics within society in general. For this project, eleven international artists working primarily with sound and installations as their main medium of expression and whose works can be seen within the framework of artistic research are invited to cogitate and position themselves within “Knowledge Societies”.

Artists: Gilles Aubry (CH) and Zouheir Atbane (MA), Younes Baba Ali (MA), Tal Isaac Hadad (FR), Anne Duk Hee Jordan (DE), Brandon LaBelle (US), Marco Montiel-Soto (VEN), Emeka Ogboh (NG), Lukas Truniger (CH) & Ali Tnani (TN) , Paolo Bottarelli (IT) and Evgenija Wassilew (FR/DE)

Photo: Julius Eastman at work. Courtesy If You’re So Smart, Why Ain’t You Rich?