The Way Earthly Things Are Going - Pleiades
171The female polyphonic group “Pleiades” was founded in May of 2006 in Thessaloniki, in order to contribute to the diffusion of the Greek-speaking folk polyphonic singing. The members of “Pleiades” have already had a considerable experience in studying and performing folk music, in Greece and abroad.
Ogboh primarily works with sound, although increasingly uses other mediums in his efforts to explore the complexities of contemporary life. In this immersive installation, a traditional Greek lamentation song is complemented with real-time stock market indexes moving across an LED display. The Way Earthly Things Are Going was commissioned by the art exhibition documenta 14, to be shown in Athens in 2017. It was installed in a raw concrete auditorium within the Athens Conservatoire, an iconic building but one which has become a symbol of failed utopian modernism.
Taking its title from a lyric in the Bob Marley song ‘So Much Trouble in the World’, this work references the current financial crisis – particularly significant to Greece, but also of global relevance – and the migration of people fleeing war and economic hardship. The ticker tape displays financial data, transmitted live from dozens of stock exchange indexes around the world. This is slowed down to match the pace of the singing, recorded specifically for this work with a traditional polyphonic choir. The lamentation song ‘When I forget, I’m glad’, from the Epirus region of northern Greece, recounts a story of forced migration and relates to the present economic situation in Greece.