BOB BICKNELL-KNIGHT

Jeff’s Dead, 2021
Single channel 4K video
4 min 0 sec

Jeff’s Dead is a short looping video, featuring the decapitated head of Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon, in the House of Commons in the UK, the de facto primary chamber of the Parliament of the UK, alongside a series of objects commonly found in the chamber, including a water jug, mic and mace. The House of Commons can only operate lawfully when the royal mace, dating from the reign of Charles II, is present.

The following text was written by curators Adrian Preisler & Emil Torp-Rasmussen for the group exhibition Kiosque de l’In-visible at Captive Portal, Copenhagen, DK, 13th May – 15th September 2025.

The looping of the polygonal blood-pool becomes hypnotizing in such a way that we might feel wrought of any particular feelings of disturbance. The bloodied scepter of Charles II used in the Lower House in the British House of Commons and a Shure SM58 microphone on a stand testify to a chain of events that led to a pruning of CEO Jeff Bezos’ head (of book-selling and anti-toilet-visiting politics fame)? As a viewer the chain of events remains undisclosed.

Could it be symbolic for cross-Atlantic economic meddling in post-Brexit Britain? A violent reaction against the neoliberal uncontrolled powers of the so-called free market? The sceptre, which must be present in the House of Commons for it to operate lawfully, has been cast aside, in a sense incurring unlawfulness in a time where corporate conglomerates function outside and above the law.

Whether digitized violence makes us more violent or not is still inconclusive – no one has decapitated Bezos in real life, turning Bicknell-Knight’s work into a meditation on our own (in)capabilities for violence. Are we really going to do it? As online discourse summons a thirst for revolution in speaking of this new Gilded Age of billionaire robber barons ruining, well, everything, the depictions of Luigi Mangione as a saint or the, let’s face it, collective disappointment in the failed assassination attempts against Donald Trump become markers for the conflicting role ideals of public, French Revolution-style execution can play under widespread feelings of political powerlessness and malfunctioning democratic structures. Jeff isn’t dead yet, but we sure wish he was. What’s come over us to make us feel that way?

Jeff’s Dead has been included in the following exhibitions:

– Kiosque de l’In-visible, curated by Adrian Preisler & Emil Torp-Rasmussen. At Captive Portal, Copenhagen, DK, 13th May – 15th September 2025.
– Eat The Rich, curated by Alexandre Pastor. At Galerie Sono, Paris, FR, 19th November – 4th December 2021.