Łukasz Surowiec
"Debt Clock"

  • Łukasz Surowiec

    Photo by Daniel Chrobak

Landscapes tend to come with a price tag: historically, the view was often a determining factor in real estate valuation or was otherwise divisive in terms of who had access to a certain view and who did not.

Yet in post-1989 Warsaw, the marketing of something as intangible as the view from a prospective buyer’s window reached extreme proportions as the city became filled with enormous billboards that devoured the land- scape almost entirely.The culmination of this tendency took place in the early years of the 21st century, smack in the eye of the billboard cyclone, when a debt clock was set up at the intersection of the main junction of Warsaw’s Jerusalem Avenue and Marszałkowska Street. The counter was neatly fit below an LED screen – the latest and greatest of its time, installed above the Cepelia building – with the intention of making a statement about the hegemony of the liberal economic policies of Leszek Balcerowicz and his emulators. For so many years it carried a historical weight as a testament to how the economic policies of Poland’s democratic transformation had negatively affected the common good of society.

The thoughtless criticism of public debt, represented by the original debt clock (among other debt clocks of the world) fed into the ideology of the self-made man and the idea of the economy as a sphere of competition between people with equal chance for success. Its consequence is the government’s casting off of their responsibility for public services, the common good and groups who don’t benefit from mainstream privilege. Economists also point to the direct correlation between efforts to reduce public debt and the rise of private debt. In areas of life where the government relinquishes its control – for example, the realm of healthcare, housing or public transport – citizens must take on a certain degree of debt.

The “Debt Clock” by Łukasz Surowiec indicates the consequences of such ideas about the market and the role of the government that dominate in the Polish public sphere. Its action, however, is broader in scope. The “Debt Clock” has been brought down from its pedestal, turning out to be nothing more than a cheap advertisement, a clumsy construction loaded down with blocks so that it doesn’t fly away. Its numbers, so tightly tethered to people’s destinies, become nothing more than a glimmer of lights when seen up close. Perhaps in this way, private debt – the level of which we’re seeing on the screen – might also be cancelled simply by unplugging it from its power source, and thus, demonstrating the specious link between debt and our moral obligations towards it. The role of the “Debt Clock” in its new guise doesn’t fit in with the political critiques of economists over recent decades, not even a critique of the dominant language of economics itself. Rather, it is an attempt in its own right to pursue a form of expression for economic theses and solutions that are different from the sort of economic theory that has been broadly accepted as the dominant school of thought.

Consultation: Kinga Kurysia, Piotr Wójcik 

See also:

Other archival events from that cycle:

DzieńGodzinaNazwa wydarzeniaMiejsce wydarzenia
Cycle WARSAW UNDER CONSTRUCTION 11Monumentomania ZODIAK Warsaw Pavilion of Architecture
Pasaż Stefana Wiecheckiego „Wiecha” 4,
18:00 Vernissage Opening of the exhibition „Monumentomania” ZODIAK Warsaw Pavilion of Architecture
Pasaż Stefana Wiecheckiego „Wiecha” 4,
18:00 Guided tour Curatorial guided tour in Englishof the „Monumentomania” exhibition ZODIAK Warsaw Pavilion of Architecture
Pasaż Stefana Wiecheckiego „Wiecha” 4,
18:00 Guided tour Guided tour in Englishof the „Monumentomania” exhibition ZODIAK Warsaw Pavilion of Architecture
Pasaż Stefana Wiecheckiego „Wiecha” 4,
18:00 Guided tour Guided tour in Englishof the „Monumentomania” exhibition ZODIAK Warsaw Pavilion of Architecture
Pasaż Stefana Wiecheckiego „Wiecha” 4,
18:00 Guided tour Guided tour in Englishof the „Monumentomania” exhibition ZODIAK Warsaw Pavilion of Architecture
Pasaż Stefana Wiecheckiego „Wiecha” 4,