An artistic tour de force through the history of capitalism, ‘Julian Rosefeldt: Euphoria’ asks the question of why there still doesn’t seem to be an alternative to this economic system today.

Drummers set the beat, a choir sings: the visually rich collage of texts quoting Adorno, Einstein, Virginie Despentes, Michel Houellebecq and Snoop Dogg becomes a veritable opera of film.

We enter a bank lobby with employees in a frenzy of equity and dance; take a taxi ride with Giancarlo Esposito through an explosive New York; hang out with philosophising homeless people around an oil-drum fire in Kyiv, and with labourers working on a parcel warehouse conveyor belt; we listen to young skateboarders in an abandoned bus depot and follow an animated tiger with the voice of Cate Blanchett through a deserted supermarket.

“Euphoria’s focus is on the dynamics of capitalism, or more precisely, the unleashed neoliberal market economy with its historic, social, and political entanglements,” Julian Rosefeldt says about capitalism’s ubiquity.

“Paradoxically, to be able to produce a work critical of capitalism, I repeatedly had to submit myself to the logic of the system. The so-called system in which we live and that we like to point a critical finger at is also all of us.”

The book features essays by Ralf Beil, bell hooks, Tim Jackson and Je Wood, as well as poems from Bonnie Prince Billy.

‘Julian Rosefeldt: Euphoria’  is co-published with Weltkulturerbe Völklinger Hutte on occasion of the exhibition ‘Julian Rosefeldt: When We Are Gone’, 11 Dec 2022 – 3 Sep 2023.