Homo Economicus: Michael

Homo Economicus (2018) is a collection of three video works exploring how men working in the City of London’s financial district both modify and commodify their own bodies. The work intentionally conflates the corporate and the corporeal, questioning male self-worth and its apparent apotheosis in the hyper-competitive financial services industry.

In each of the works, a constructed 3D character is portrayed as a businessman with its own name Ray, Kumar and Michael, who exist within a virtual corporate space. The personal narration is grounded in interviews by the artist with real city men describing their daily routine. During the narration, each character inflates and subsequently deflates like a balloon as the pitch of the voice rises and lowers, acting as a metaphor for the male ego. Homo Economicus proposes an alternative economy of the male body; not as an unquestioned instrument of power, but a site of vulnerability and power-play.

Homo Economicus was produced at Somerset House Studios with sound design by Nick Ryan and commissioned with the support of the London Community Foundation and Cockayne - Grants for the Arts.

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