Foreign Landscapes
Out there, there’s this big bubble, hovering over consulting agencies, investment banks and major companies. It’s formed only by numbers, statistics, analyses and profit-oriented minds, causing a static detachment of reality. Highly educated and motivated young consultants and bankers work in a sphere of numb calculation and unconscious analyses in order to maximize the profit of rich companies and private investors. De facto, they juggle around with thoroughly gathered numbers in Excel-Charts and PowerPoint-Diagrams to make the rich even richer, without noticing which gearwheel in the world’s capitalistic structure they actually are. Talking to young asset consultants and business consultants in Germany, who have just graduated from Business-School, displayed, that all of their work appears so factual to them, causing the relation to reality to seem totally abstract. Therefore, we could say they are unconscious intelligent minds, blinded by rays of the numerical finance world. That’s actually no surprise if you take into account, that most of the money they work with in form of funds, commercial papers etc., does not exist.
My older brother is 25 years old and already a business consultant in one of the worldwide leading consulting companies. He graduated from the top business schools in Europe, always trying to be part of the elite. His drive was not due to the high wages he could expect with this profession but his actual passion for analyzing things, relating them to bigger contexts and finally presenting the results in neatly made charts and diagrams. This is exactly what he is doing now in his job as a business consultant, but with a much higher responsibility, which he can’t grasp. When I asked him how he is able to work 15 hours per day, just to figure out how to maximize profits of a company holding billions of euros, he said, that these thoughts seem incredibly abstract when you are only confronted with statistics day by day, trying to reach the theoretical goals your client is aiming for.
My observation of my brother’s career left me with a very distanced and skeptical view on this world. It’s a microcosm with it’s own moral, isolating itself from reality and ignoring their responsibility for social inequality. This world is such an abstract construct of capitalism which has, to me, lost the relations to fundamental human values.
From this perspective I have looked at statistics, charts, diagrams and analysis presentations of my brother, that he has prepared over the years during his studies and in his job. I took pictures of those neatly, colorfully made presentations of facts and numbers, wresting all sense from it by portraying them as hazy, abstract landscapes of colors. Hence, the images exist as independent, mystical compositions, illustrating and criticizing a distant world that hovers above capital and profit.
My older brother is 25 years old and already a business consultant in one of the worldwide leading consulting companies. He graduated from the top business schools in Europe, always trying to be part of the elite. His drive was not due to the high wages he could expect with this profession but his actual passion for analyzing things, relating them to bigger contexts and finally presenting the results in neatly made charts and diagrams. This is exactly what he is doing now in his job as a business consultant, but with a much higher responsibility, which he can’t grasp. When I asked him how he is able to work 15 hours per day, just to figure out how to maximize profits of a company holding billions of euros, he said, that these thoughts seem incredibly abstract when you are only confronted with statistics day by day, trying to reach the theoretical goals your client is aiming for.
My observation of my brother’s career left me with a very distanced and skeptical view on this world. It’s a microcosm with it’s own moral, isolating itself from reality and ignoring their responsibility for social inequality. This world is such an abstract construct of capitalism which has, to me, lost the relations to fundamental human values.
From this perspective I have looked at statistics, charts, diagrams and analysis presentations of my brother, that he has prepared over the years during his studies and in his job. I took pictures of those neatly, colorfully made presentations of facts and numbers, wresting all sense from it by portraying them as hazy, abstract landscapes of colors. Hence, the images exist as independent, mystical compositions, illustrating and criticizing a distant world that hovers above capital and profit.