The Power Plant

Goldin+Senneby is the framework for collaboration between Swedish artists Simon Goldin and Jakob Senneby. Since 2004, Goldin+Senneby have initiated projects that explore juridical, financial and spatial constructs through notions of the performative and the virtual. Through actions and theoretical pursuits, they interrogate the mythologies created by virtual economies and fictional personae. Their exhibition at The Power Plant comes at a crucial moment, as the confidential activities of corporations are being traced and investigated in the wake of collapsed world markets and global economic instability.

For their first solo exhibition in North America, Goldin+Senneby present their ongoing research project Headless, a critical investigation of the fictional offshore company Headless Ltd. The exhibition’s point of departure is the hypothesis that Headless Ltd., a Bahamas-registered corporation, is a contemporary incarnation of Acéphale, the secret society initiated by philosopher Georges Bataille in the 1930s. Goldin+Senneby explore how the juridical construction of offshore financial centers function as performative acts that fictionalize place and stage realms of invisibility.

Headless consists of two distinct perspectives on Goldin+Senneby’s ongoing practice. A documentary film, whose creation has been delegated by Goldin+Senneby to directors Kate Cooper and Richard John Jones, reflexively involves investigative journalist Gavin MacFadyen, who lends his expertise to the filmmakers to suggest how they should make a documentary about Headless Ltd. The documentary will be produced over the course of the exhibition and screened in three segments, released on 12 December, 24 January and 13 February. The other perspective is developed by independent curator Kim Einarsson and scenographer Anna Heymowska, who have been contracted to produce a pedagogical display. This display introduces the viewer to K.D., who is both the fictional author of Looking for Headless, a novel in the making, and an employee at the offshore consultancy company Sovereign Group. A lecture during the exhibition’s opening weekend by Angus Cameron, economic geographer at the University of Leicester, will further explore Goldin+Senneby’s practice, and the modes of performance the collaborators employ in their study of Headless Ltd.