Outclassed (Video, silent, 5 mins, 2016)
Outclassed remixes ideas that circulate around the psycho-social construction of class, geo-political ranking and the graded social memory of modern wars. The tragic and comfortably distant spectacle of The First World War is set at the top of the league table as the Number One world war that subsequent wars are ranked beneath.
Similarly, the classification of the world by the The West into the advanced ‘First World’, followed by the less developed ‘Second World’ of the former Soviet countries of eastern Europe and in third place, the planned under-development of the ‘Third World’ of the remaining ¾ of the world’s population characterised as nations with a ruling elite, a non-existent middle class with the vast majority living in poverty and crippling foreign debt- a world beaten.
Class is usually taken out of populist Histories and is replaced by sentimental ideas of a nation pulling together – all classes united and unchanged against a foreign enemy during wartime. References to class then become innocuous and stylistic – to ‘show class’ in style or medal winning performances by competing nations.
See also Anti-Climb print Outclass (Class series)