With an increasingly liberalized, therefore deregulated economy, an increased regulation of the social has taken place in order to force and maintain an equilibrium which cannot otherwise be obtained in an inherently unstable system. The economic “progress” of capitalism exchanges – almost as a currency – one individual’s freedom for that of another, allowing the definition of the “other” to facilitate and simplify this process, forcing regulative apparatuses for its maintenance. As the system constantly reaches towards compromises for preventing crises, that very system is in fact itself a crisis. Failure is inevitable, as it is at the very core of the capitalist system.

The ever-evolving, ever-developing regulation of the social protects the deregulation of the flow and multiplication of capital, producing profit through its very existence. The globalized homogenization of the modes of social regulation maintain a desired ideology, producing “otherness,” sexism and racism, immobilizing the potential for resistance through a pathological relationship of separation and remedy. The system functions as the suspended rotation of a perpetuating balancing act over an inherent instability. This form of dependence goes beyond colonial expansion and pathological modification to utilizing life and death as the result of a limit to resources. It passes beyond the boundaries of the colony onto the colonization of the body itself, enveloping both migrants on sovereign territory as well as the profit produced through the unequal development of capitalism, such as hyper-development in “transitional regions,” fueling and regulating the unstable advanced neoliberalism of the “West.” Former-socialist nations are now exploding under the imposition of “freedom” – freedom of market growth. The imposition of “freedom” has been granted as development aid, during the collapse of formerly-regulated policies. With the globalization of “freedom,” comes the aforementioned homogenized ideologies of the media and education, as well as globalized police forces and border control. The trauma of the conditions, often post-war, which induced this collapse, has left open wounds worldwide. These open wounds have provided an entry-point for the “freedom” and neocolonial flow of capital. This pathology of treating trauma with regulated relief signifies the condition under which transitional societies exist and the conditions under which the First World is able to maintain and profit from the imposition of the instability of its own structures. The “development” of the less endowed maintains the stability of the sovereign in a parasite-host relationship. While the link between parasite and host is always symbiotic, thus in some way benefiting and ailing both involved, there is a flip-side, referred to in biology as “parasitoidism” – or “necrotrophy.” Necrotrophy is defined by a parasite implanting itself within the host organism in such a way that it inevitably forces the host’s death with its own. This form of dependence goes beyond colonial expansion and pathological modification to utilizing life and death as the result of the limit to resources. The very elements which emphasize the current economic collapse/crisis are the very same token with which life is threatened and regulated, where deregulation and regulation necessarily rely on one another in order to exist.

The series of diagrams follows a process of analysis, between visual art and theory, which examines how capital plays a role in the various spheres of life. The critique spans from a historical overview and critique of modernity, through to the developments of neoliberalism and neocolonialism and capitalism’s effect on all spheres of life, with a look at how specific systems are produced and reproduced within social structures, in order to support the systematic growth of capitalization. The diagrams are a visualization of a textuality and theoretical practice, resulting from a longer process of artistic research, and therefore, serve as a platform for research and analysis.

Lina Dokuzović is an artist and a PhD student at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna.