Alexandros Georgiou

b. 1972, USA

In the core of insanity I find greed. When I say insanity, I include the need to maximise the profit that leads many corporations to make inhumane decisions, to the need for a new car every year, or the purchase of a half-a-million-dollar photo. With rare exceptions we are all aware that something is going wrong worldwide. Even people who never listen to the news or care about the outside world cannot escape noticing the strange behaviour of the weather, for example.

I also feel there is something wrong, but I tend to just put the blame on something external. I feel better believing that I am the ‘good’ one, and I dislike the ‘bad’ ones who are responsible for everything that goes wrong. I made the GREED KILLS button because I want to remember that the problem lies with me. There is enough conflict as it is, and what really destroys is not a person who is just another human being, but inhumane emotions like greed that have taken over. There are elements in the character of a person we need to fight against, not against the person himself, who, in most cases, suffers already. And instead of dealing with depression as a disease where in most cases it is the healthy reaction of the psyche to the insanity in which we find ourselves, we should think of greed as a disease that needs to be cured. It is a disease that is slowly destroying us.

The witch in Rainbow – the folk musical by artist Jack Early – succeeds in the end having her diamond necklace enlarged. She is too excited to realise, till it is too late, that the diamonds have become so big and heavy that from surrounding her neck, they end up surrounding her whole body. The huge, beautiful diamonds form a prison around her that she never manages to escape.

(Text: give(a)way catalogue, 2006)