Zone Fever (An Un Level Playing Field) 2024 – 326 x 55 x 168cm, canvas, acrylic paint, latex, video, monitor, wood, paper, plexiglass, sheet plastic, letraset, vinyl lettering, bricks, various stones, camouflage fabric, microphones, letter boxes, paint cans, photographs, plaster, jute, wire, foam
Special Economic Zones are designated enclaves with separate laws and regulations from the host country, they are targeted attempts by corporations working with governments to withdraw from society by isolating away from the interventionist constraints of big government on capital accumulation.
The 2008 financial crash saw 1000’s more SEZs proliferate around the world, they are globalisation incarnate, as the welfare state atrophies from chronic underfunding, corporations like Blackrock step in to ‘rescue’ governments from the negatively termed overreach of social governance and egalitarianism. SEZs have colonialist legacies dating back to 1600 with the East India Company, cycling through to the 1850s when the British colonized Hong Kong and Singapore leading to China’s ‘century of humiliation’.
Collective sovereignty is people power, when this is replaced with corporate sovereignty, it is the asset classes who gain power.
Brexit is all about deregulation and corporate governance within 86 free zones, many of these zones had previously failed under Margaret Thatcher’s administration due to the UK coming up against EU rules on State aid (public money), where governments of member states are prohibited from giving public money to companies of their choosing setting up in SEZs. This creates an unlevel playing field which distorts markets by implementing an aggressively competitive laissez-faire system.
Secondary legislation means minimal Parliamentary or public scrutiny, and is embedded in the UK’s 86 free zones. This means companies can make their own laws and rules within the borders of the free zones. The “Henry VIII clause” is one loaded with constitutional symbolism. The name echoes the King’s “impersonation of executive autocracy”: his attempt to usurp the will of Parliament. We are told that Parliament is sovereign, ‘but retrospective Henry VIII clauses are worrying because they entrust the executive, or potentially some other body, with the power to overturn prior Acts of Parliament: rather than legislation being altered by an elected body, statutes are changed by the largely non-elected, if accountable, executive branch. Democratic processes appear to have been circumvented’.
