Rousseau, Fences and Statement

We use this quote is a starting point: “The first man who, having fenced off a piece of land, said ‘This is mine,’ and found people naive enough to believe him, that man was the true founder of civil society.” (Jean-Jacques Rousseau, “Discourse on the Origin and Foundation of the Inequality between Men,” in The Social Contract and Discourses, Everyman’s Library, 1913.) Rousseau believed that the need for human beings to own territories was motivated by self-esteem; l’amour-propre (self-love?). His concept of inequality may sound naive as it distills the origins of the complexity of the world into simple moral choices. But in a contemporary context, we can observe a lot of love nowadays: territories are owned, administered, managed, regulated. Hyperrealistic details are mapped onto territories and monitored by companies that interact and love each other very much.

POSTER
2011, 2 silkscreen pass (red on red)
22 × 30", Edition of 15.