In this capitalist society we live in, individual characteristics no longer mean anything. Everything is subject to the potentiality of being converted into monetary value at any time. Even we, as human beings, sell our labour, yet it no longer matters who is doing the work, as both material and human alienation occur through detaching conditions like long working hours.
Shortly after the Sunflower Student Movement in 2014, Niwa requested more than 100 people he happened to meet on the streets in Taipei to state on camera, "Taiwan will disappear if I die". Ten years later, in 2024, he requested people in Taichung to do likewise.
Twenty twenty-four is a year of decisive elections all over the world. Not only the presidential elections in the US but also a host of parliamentary elections in Europe are slated for this autumn, and everywhere, including in Austria, the Right is on the rise. Yoshinori Niwa responds to this super election year with a project in public space—at present saturated by posters with portraits and slogans.
In a capitalist society, signified by urban contexts such as Delhi, all kinds of wealth and ways of living appear as "products". We, the human race, with all our different personalities, ways of thinking and opinions, are shaped in a highly developed, late-capitalist society fuelled by commodities that we make (products, money, etc.) and are subject to what Marx called "Entfremdung" (alienation). In other words, it has become a powerful force to control human beings. In this artistic project we will try to find out how this "alienation" came about, to escape from this concept and to discover new human possibilities. The problem with the capitalist society we live in is that we are forced to participate in "capital", which is based on infinite amplification, thus limiting the influence of the individual as long as we live in this society and forcing humanity to seek more and more wealth (and misperceived products and money).