The Pleasure of Expense is a chapter within my latest research, exhibition and film project. The project addresses the concept of political gifting of culture throughout (trans)national identity crises via the exploration of paramount examples of gifts of architecture, art, music and dance using allegory and narrative. It’s an artwork that reaches into depths of historical case-studies and examples of culture being utilised as a Trojan horse of political and national power. The film is shot exclusively within architectures that were all political gifts themselves (including the Palace of Nations Geneva, Niemeyer’s French Communist Headquarters  in Paris, Tito’s Museum of 25th of May in Belgrade); and the music, script as well as the characters are all drafted from some of the most perturbing examples of diplomatic and political cases of culture deployed as a trojan horse of political power. 
The chapter I propose for the biennial is a performative installation with a segment of the film: developing further the first performative output we carried out at Cooper Gallery Dundee (attached links). As this is a project with multiple outputs, which evolve the theme within specific instalments into more context and site specific set ups, I would like to develop the next chapter specifically with the biennial team (words/singers/installation).