The soundtrack: The music is meant to be beautiful but, because it is based on the ugliness of financial precarity and a system that crashes approximately every fifteen years, there is a tension between aesthetic beauty and an ugly lived reality. I invite the audience to contemplate the normalization of financial crisis and the structures that uphold models that lead to financial insecurity/precarity.
There are three loops in the soundtrack Neoliberal Loops.
Loop #1: The whole duration of the 2008 Recession (2007-2009)
Loop #2: The U.S. government interventions with money, including bailing out AIG and two subsequent financial packages (9/16/08, 10/03/08, and 02/17/2009) Starting on each “event” day, another note is added to create a harmony on 9/16/08, a triad on 10/03/08, and a 7th on 2/17/09. The extra notes represent the money affecting the stock market so the harmonies continue for the rest of the musical composition.
Loop #3: The Occupy Wall Street encampment in NYC as a 59-day intervention (09/17/11-11/15/11) Musical discordance is overlaid over corresponding dates in 2008 to coincide with the occupation in 2011.
Neoliberal Loops Soundtrack (Remixed)
Neoliberal Loops REMIX TRACK pt1_Music 1637_1704-2008 [WINTER DREAMS]
43 min., 4 sec.
Neoliberal Loops REMIX TRACK pt2_Music 2009-2023_2026 [DIAMONDS AND CHERRY BLOSSOMS]
31 min., 8 sec.
9 to 5 Work B**ch
5 min., 22 sec.
Neoliberal Loops (Opening bell numbers for each day of the recession at 510bpm)
46 sec.
I remixed the Neoliberal Loops soundtrack with samples of music from classical music to pop music, including hip hop, in chronological order.
I was influenced by the American DJ Girl Talk who mixes pop and hip hop. His songs make me feel nostalgic. I wanted to create an experience of nostalgia and moving through time while linking the stock market to the soundtrack of everyday life.
I was also influenced by the Turkish producer and electronic music artist Venëris. Indeed, I included his “Vivaldi Winter Drill #2” in the “Neoliberal Loops” remix. He takes classical music and adds hip-hop bass to create pieces that stay true to the classical music but add contemporary elements. I see this as a way of viewing history in the present. We take what we know of the past but put a modern spin on it. Historians call it presentism, with a negative connotation implying that you are not being true to the times. An inaccuracy due to our inability to embody the minds of people of the past with different concerns and sensibilities. However, I think it’s unavoidable and it’s the way we understand the world around us. Additionally, classical music can feel really old and Venëris’s contemporary hip-hop elements make the old pieces feel fresh and modern. Instead of a beautiful antiquated piece of art that you admire and try to imagine the zeitgeist of the times, new life if breathed into the piece and you don’t have to imagine it. You can (literally) feel it.
The soundtrack starts with 1704’s “Toccata and Fugue in D minor” by Johann Sebastian Bach because it’s the earliest music I could find close to 1637 when the tulip bubble began. I wanted to connect these worlds running in parallel: life and commerce.
I divided this timeline into two parts: before and after 2008 to delineate between before and after the crash.
Additionally, by juxtaposing similar phenomena, e.g. the pursuit of money, in a short succession, I emphasize Western culture’s preoccupation with wealth.
Additional “Neoliberal Loops” remixes include the themes of rain, weather, work, money, and luxury goods. E.g. Blending Dolly Parton’s “9 to 5” with Britney Spears’s “Work B**ch” sparks a dialogue between feminism and postfeminism in relation to work and capitalism.
– Emma C. Johnson, 2026
Works referenced
Bourriaud, Nicolas. Relational Aesthetics. Dijon: Les Presses du réel, 2002.
Braudel, Fernand. The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II. Translated by Siân Reynolds. 2 vols. New York: Harper & Row, 1972–76.
Godmilow, Jill. Kill the Documentary: A Letter to Filmmakers, Students, and Scholars. New York: Columbia University Press, 2022.
Mirzoeff, Nicholas. The Right to Look: A Counterhistory of Visuality. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2011.
Snow, Michael, dir. Wavelength. 1967; New York: The Film-makers' Cooperative, 1967. 16mm film.
The Wall Street Journal.
