Agenda 2010 by Gullibloon

When your entire government starts speaking pure nonsense, people relinquish their common sense and resign themselves to a wide array of harmful measures. The new recording Agenda 2010 by sound artist Gullibloon dismantles the insanity that threw Germany into one of its harshest periods of austerity. In the early 2000s, Germany’s ostensibly left-wing Social Democratic Party passed a bill into law that  massively decreased the German social safety net, slashing pensions, taxes, and unemployment benefits. Though history later subsumed this story as part of a worldwide movement towards market liberalization, artists like Gullibloon shout out from the back of the room, reminding us of the absurdity of a supposedly “socialist” party dismantling a nation’s welfare program. The record Agenda 2010, named after this infamous austerity measure, consists of a computerized voice reading the words of the Wikipedia article about Agenda 2010 out of order. In so doing, these radical sound artists shine an unflattering spotlight on a bizarre move by the left to radically promote capitalism in Germany, inviting us to mock this supposedly predictable historical moment. -Michael