Ideologies1 that perpetuate power2 imbalances direct our world, often appearing so natural that they remain largely unseen (Lacey 2009:74,111), their effect a perpetual hierarchy of winners and losers, with patent consequences.
With an installation that repeatedly references the metaphor of the horse and rider, To flog a dead horse (2022) mounts themes of power, ideology and subjectivity. The metaphor stems from the fact that our subjugating, exploitative relationship with horses played a "formative role in shaping the world" (Edwards & Graham 2011:9,15). Cast in bronze, equestrian statues that are common in public squares worldwide reflect this, and signify uneven power relationship in politics, economics and the environment.
Horses no longer occupying the role that they once did, the desk/table becomes the 21st century political and economic placeholder of the horse and rider, a signifier of the business office as well as of the state. Both horses and tables also have religious significance.
Drawing on the anthropomorphic quality of horses, the work references Berlinde de Bruyckere's3 Lost 1 (2006), having replaced her equine sculpture with a zoomorphic wooden table. Though the emphasis is on the horse, the rider is ominously ubiquitous. The suspended table-horse-human conflates guilt and innocence, power hierarchies being relative, changeable and interconnected. The title4 at once confirms and confounds. Our questions are set up and left to teeter.
1 An ideology is a "systematic framework of social understanding, motivated by a will to power, or a desire to be accepted as the 'right' way of thinking, which has wide (...) support within a particular society or social group" (Lacey 2009:100).
2 Referencing the philosopher Michel Foucault, I have adopted the broader definition of power as "the site of an unequal relationship between the powerful and the powerless" and not the narrower definition of power as the "property of (...) a ruling class" (Lacey 2009:115). Furthermore, power is an expression of society's ideology and discourse, where discourse is "not neutral", communicating the "systematic framework of social understanding" and thereby "actively (...) constitute[ing]" ideology (Lacey 2009:111,114,115).
3 Berlinde de Bruyckere, Lost 1 (2006). Medium and dimensions unknown. Collection
unknown. https://www.hauserwirth.com/artists/2782berlinde-de-bruyckere/
(Accessed on 16 September 2022).
4 The title "to flog a dead horse" is an idiomatic expression that refers to the futility of persisting with an action that will have no effect or serve no end, "flog" referring to being beaten or whipped (Farlex Dictionary of Idioms 2022). Alternatively, flog means to be sold or put up for sale, in which case the phrase means to sell an object or idea that is useless, without value or false.
Video by Erika Suter. Sound by Alice Durr and Erika Suter. The sound was augmented with the following sound sample: SPANAC, 2022. Sound of wind blowing in tower, Free Sound Library, 4 August. https://www.freesoundslibrary.com/sound-of-wind-blowing-in-tower/#google_vignette (Accessed on 6 November 2022).