Collapse drive

Olalla Gómez Valdericeda & Ramón Mateos

from February 28, 2025 to April 26, 2025

"Capitalism rules, perverts, sustains the wealth of a few and tramples on those who nurture it from the bottom up. The capitalist system encourages individualism and creates borders: it does not matter expelling or making use of the other if it contributes to one's own benefit of productivity and performance. Capitalism expresses itself at the macro level in the functioning of global superpowers, but also at the micro level; in small economies and in the satisfaction of personal desire. It is an ever-evolving machinery through which subjects self-exploit and enslave those in vulnerable conditions. Production and destruction go hand in hand in a process that, according to the Korean philosopher Byung-Chul Han, has to do with the Freudian idea of the death drive, that inherent tendency of living beings to return to an inert state, which manifests itself as vital anguish and destructive impulse.  Capitalism denies the idea of death and channels these aggressive forces of the human being to put them at the service of the exponential growth of resources; as if the capitalist economy of violence and the progressive capacity to kill were translated into possibilities of survival for those who exercise it. 

The duo proposal by Ramón Mateos and Olalla Gómez Valdericeda addresses these questions through a series of pieces that, together, present the perverse scenario of current capitalist accumulation devoid of anaesthesia."

Nerea Ubieto 

"The economy of violence is ruled by a logic of accumulation. The more violence you exert, the more powerful you feel. Accumulate killing power produces a feeling of growth, force, power - of invulnerability and immortality (...). Killing protects against death. By killing, you arrest death. An increase in killing power means a reduction in death"

Byung-Chul Han. Capitalism and death drive. 

Curated by Nerea Ubieto