Critical Art Ensemble

KASSEL, 9 June — It’s opening day of dOCUMENTA (13) here in Kassel, the first of the “100 Days” of the exposition. Trilby explores Critical Art Ensemble’s massive installation, A Temporary Monument to Global Economic Inequality

text of graphic novel page:

SHOCKING STORY!

Critical Art Ensemble hung a graph depicting degrees of wealth, but a helicopter was needed to reach the level of the 1%.

A Public Misery Message: A Temporary Monument to Global Economic Inequality

This banner represents the economic wealth of the global population quintiles (each 20 percent of population) relative to each other. Each quintile’s average wealth (assets minus debt) is represented at a scale of 1cm = 100 USD. The wealth of the top 1 percent is so much greater than those below it that its distance from the rest of the quintiles must be represented by a helicopter flight rather than making the banner the 225 meters required to depict the top wealth holders’ proportional total assets. The top 1 percent owns over 15 times more wealth that the rest of the world combined.

Source: Credit Suisse Global Wealth Databook 2011