The End of Money

Witte de With, Center for Contemporary Art The End of Money

Edited by Juan A. Gaitán C o n t e n t

Introduction 4 Juan A. Gaitan

Mark to Market Value, Inc. 10 (1st of 9 text works spread through this publication) Tonel

The Theory of Money 12 Pierre Bismuth

“Where is the Money, Lebowski?” 14 Making Ends Meet Dieter Roelstraete

Notes on Improperties 24 Hadley+Maxwell

Five Acts of Money 32 Carolina Sanín

Zachary Formwalt 42

The End of Coins, the Triumph of Money, 44 and the Disruptive Revolution of Art Donatien Grau

Lili Reynaud-Dewar 50

The End Always Comes Twice 58 Dessislava Dimova

Appendix 71

Biographies 137

Colophon and Acknowledgements 143 Introduction Since the severe funding cuts that will soon hit the Dutch culture sector were announced in 2010, discourse on arts Juan A. Gaitán and culture has become almost exclusively centered on the issue of money. Displeasure and outrage have quickly emerged from private into public discussions about the governmental resolution to reduce its spending – a resolution made by resolute bureaucrats whose reasoning they have kept mostly to themselves, in spite of the (suspiciously) spectacular tactics used to publicize their radical decisions. According to the rumors and the numbers, the cuts will affect institutions across the board. National museums will lose 20% of their operating budgets, presentation houses (of which an as of yet undisclosed six will remain) an equal or higher amount. Music, theatre, and dance are in no better shape. Neither are individual artists, who now face a 50% reduction in available funds. But it also seems that this is not a new problem. Once one has factored in the exceptional growth in and of institutions dedicated to arts and culture, in the Netherlands cultural funding is now 20% of what it was twenty years ago. It being so obvious that an efficient reductions system has long been silently in motion, why the decision to “open,” even to “offer,” this issue up for public debate? (The counter to this question is, of course: What is it that is not being debated publicly when we speak about money for the arts? Surely there are other areas of much more general interest for the public sphere that are being affected by this neo-liberal move away from government subsidy). Unlike former cuts, which in spite of laying the ground for the current ones were motivated by less dogmatic concerns, the current cuts constitute an inimical demand for cultural institutions to become financially self-sufficient. In the more immediate future this means that cultural in- stitutions will have to internalize the dominant logic of the economy and find ways to justify their existence in the terms set by this logic (numbers); in a more general sense, however, this may not be an isolated assault, directed exclusively at arts and culture. It is very likely that this neo-liberal economic attitude extends to other, more essen- tial areas of daily life: health, education, housing. Thus we should at least acknowledge the possibility that this assault on culture is part of a much wider project – the systematic dismantling of the welfare state and of all the vestiges of a socialist system, and the re-direction of tax money towards other areas of government. (But which? If one follows the American model, one would have to conclude that the move is towards: banking and military operations, followed by infrastructural subsidies, followed by sporadic and merely palliative subsidies for health, education, housing, though only at the level of investment interests and not at the level

4 5 Introduction of individuals; parallel to this is the re-direction of large alienation, there was never any doubt that individual quantities of money destined to produce long-term revenue workers actually had thoughts while engaged in repetitious such as lines of credit for foreign countries.) tasks the more common meaning given to the concept of alienation (alienation from the product of one’s labor) The End of Money is a critical statement within this crisis gained the sense of an even more important alienation – of public investment, in the arts and elsewhere, but it is not of action from thought. The aim was to affect not thought about the financial component of this much more general alone, but creativity, which can only take place when there crisis. In its necessarily narrow focus on art and money, the is continuity and a convergence of thought and action. exhibition aimed at these two problems (money and art) Such utopias have of course been fraught with not as mutually sustaining subjects, but as two different aporias and paradoxes. The most important ones take us functions of abstraction and dematerialization. It is not the back to Hegel’s conception of the end of art: As Dieter relationship between art and money that this exhibition set Roelstraete argues in his essay, for Hegel the end of art is out to address, but the nostalgia for a tangible world that marked by the incorporation of the work of art into history – might be experienced outside the value systems set by eco- which means that it is consequently released from the nomic interests or the preconceptions imposed by excessive space of transcendental correspondences. In this sense, art representations of the world. Such is the utopian horizon and money are subjected to inverse transformations. Money towards which the idea of the end of money is pointing. loses the ties to necessity that more immediate forms of The exhibition thus presents one of the issues at exchange still carry and becomes the standard itself; art, hand – money – as categorically different from the other on the other hand, loses ground in the space of mimetic issue at hand – art – treating them as a-parallel problems. representations (and transcendental correspondences) as If the function of money today is to insist and to further an the material world is systematically incorporated into the abstract ordering of the world suitable to economic determinations of monetary value and economic interests. interests, then the function of art is exactly the opposite: Gold is the conductor of both operations, as it is the last When one speaks of “the end of art,” one is in fact speaking link to nature in the development of monetary economies, of the very horizon towards which artistic production in the principal (though not the most expensive) symbol of the modern age has been directed. That horizon is perhaps symbolic value, and the last (or latest) of the elements to best articulated within Lucy Lippard’s notion of the be folded into the world of speculative economics. “dematerialization of art,” or the realization of an avant- At the heart of Donatien Grau’s essay is the provo- gardist ethos according to which art is to effect its own end cative claim that the end of coins (and, by extension, of fiat by dissolution – into everyday life, into other forms of currency) is the triumph of money. This argument focuses production, and so on. Of course, before this happens, on another historical problem that is not so commonly dis- everyday life has to adopt the conditions necessary for such cussed: the coin, as one of the original forms of fiat currency, dissolution, and one of these conditions, as Dessislava has never been just the carrier of monetary value, it is also Dimova argues in this book (and presents as a missed his- the carrier of symbolic value; a value that is constantly torical opportunity), is the emancipation of leisure from threatening to supersede the denomination of the coin and the double administration of labor and time. Although this make its monetary value irrelevant. In this sense, as Grau’s fact is rarely discussed, it is no accident that so many of introduction suggests, in the coin one already has the two the products of early-20th century avant-garde art and sides of the Hegelian art historical narrative: the threat that design were objects of leisure (chess boards, tea pots, tables the real places to the symbolic and the threat that the sym- and chairs, and so on) meant to interpellate the relation- bolic places to the real. ship that the industrial revolution established between the In these equations of money the individual remains human body and labor. one of the most commonly overseen factors. Using the Like that of several other optimists, Lippard’s elements of what, resorting to a Graeco-Latinism, Serge utopia was underpinned by an enthusiasm for the machine Doubrovsky called autofiction (distinguishable from a and its promise to emancipate humans from labor – or, if fictionalized autobiography, in that the primary purpose not from labor tout court, then at least from the more labori- of autofiction is not biographical) Carolina Sanín brings the ous aspects of labor. To put it in the terms set by Hannah individual face to face with a repertoire of desires that are Arendt: the hope has been to establish a continuity between produced within the logic of money, at least as understood thought and action that industrial labor precluded. At least by capitalism. Put otherwise, Sanín’s Five Acts of Money is in the more sophisticated theories of modern labor and a story about the ethos of the capitalist logos.

6 Juan A. Gaitán 7 Introduction This book has been conceived as a parallel reflection to the exhibition The End of Money. It includes a number of con- tributions that extend the exhibition proper beyond its self-contained existence in the gallery space. In this respect, it is also a vehicle through which the exhibition can find different discursive grounds for exploring the theme of the end of money, both as a literary and as an iconographic motif. Beyond the aforementioned essays by Dessislava Dimova, Donatien Grau, and Dieter Roelstraete, as well as the work of fiction by Carolina Sanín, contributions by several of the exhibiting artists – Pierre Bismuth, Tonel (Antonio Eligio Fernández), Hadley+Maxwell, and Peter Fischli and David Weiss – extend this work of reflection beyond the work that appeared within the show. May there be other relationships to the world.

8 Juan A. Gaitán 9 10 Tonel 11 The Theory of Money Money is the general theory of this world, its encyclopaedic compendium, its logic in popular form, its spiritual point Pierre Bismuth d’honneur, its enthusiasm, its moral sanction, its solemn complement, and its universal basis of consolation and justification. It is the fantastic realization of the human essence since the human essence has not acquired any true reality. The struggle against money is, therefore, indirectly the struggle against that world whose spiritual aroma is money.

Money is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Money is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.

The abolition of money as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness. To call on them to give up their illusions about their condition is to call on them to give up a condition that requires illusions. The criticism of money is, therefore, in embryo, the criticism of that vale of tears of which money is the halo.

Criticism has plucked the imaginary flowers on the chain not in order that man shall continue to bear that chain without fantasy or consolation, but so that he shall throw off the chain and pluck the living flower. The criticism of money disillusions man, so that he will think, act, and fashion his reality like a man who has discarded his illusions and regained his senses, so that he will move around himself as his own true Sun.

04.02.2011

12 13 The Theory of Money “Where’s the Money, Lebowski?” “The goal of management is to make money, not to make Making Ends Meet steel”– James Roderick, chairman of U.S. Steel, 19791 1 Quoted in David Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity, Oxford: Blackwell Dieter Roelstraete Publishers, 1990, p. 158. 0 . P r e l u d e In April 2008, a chunky special issue of one of the world’s 2 It is worth quoting the context in which most influential and widely-read art magazines put an image this fragment appears in greater of Damien Hirst’s For the Love of God, a platinum cast of detail. Baxandall’s primer in the social a human skull studded with 8601 flawless diamonds, on its history of pictorial style begins by stating that “a fifteenth-century paint- cover. Published at the peak of the naughties art market ing is the deposit of a social relation- boom – just five months later, on the very same day that ship. (…) The relationship of which the Lehman Brothers filed for the largest bankruptcy in history, painting is the deposit was among other things a commercial relation- Hirst would make an estimated 200 million dollars in one ship, and some of the economic prac- day at a Sotheby’s auction – Artforum’s investigation of “art tices of the period are quite concretely and its markets” made for some 125 pages of actual writing, embodied in the paintings. Money is very important in the history of art. It quite a bit of it very good of course, buried deep beneath acts on painting not only in the matter 275 pages of gallery (and some museum) advertising. of a client being willing to spend Some nine months later, in January 2009, another issue of money on a work, but in the details of Artforum appeared, this time with an image of a work of how he hands it over. (…) Paintings are among other things fossils of art by the much more critically acclaimed (and much more economic life.” In: Michael Baxandall, affordable) Jimmie Durham on its cover – a sculpture con- Painting and Experience in Fifteenth sisting of a giant boulder squashing a small aircraft. In this Century Italy: A Primer in the Social History of Pictorial Style, Oxford: issue, art historian Christopher S. Wood remembered Oxford University Press, 1972, p. 1. British colleague Michael Baxandall, who had died aged 74 I was reminded of Baxandall’s terse in August 2008, in a tribute that opened with the following formulation when I last visited the Museo Civico d’Arte Antica in Turin quote from Baxandall’s most popular book, Painting and (during an art fair, it may perhaps be Experience in Fifteenth-Century Italy: “money is very useful to admit), the prize possession important in the history of art.”2 Indeed, because of the of which is an Antonello da Messina portrait of an unidentified man from steep drop in advertising revenue following the global finan- 1476 that adorns every single piece cial crisis that was seemingly ushered in by the afore- of museum advertising. Controversy mentioned Lehman Brothers bankruptcy, this particular over the sitter’s precise identity con- tinues to rage, but one thing is for issue of Artforum was about half the size of those published certain: Turin’s most widely celebrated in the previous two years, demonstrating that perhaps piece of ‘ancient’ art is a portrait of never before had money been so important in the history a banker – a powerful reminder of the of art – or at least never so ostensibly, palpably important. extraordinarily long history of art’s relationship to money, a history reach- ing much further back, clearly, than that of art’s relationship to (to name 1 . A l l u d e but one obvious alternative) critique, especially the critique of the com- The complexity of the processes that have set off the global modification of art. credit crunch and the subsequent economic downturn effectively continues to cloud our ability to appreciate this as a real crisis (and an especially epochal one at that, as we are continually reminded). Yet, one thing that this particular crisis has in common with most of its more thoroughly studied predecessors (counting from the post- war crisis of all crises, the oil crisis of 1971 – 73) is the deepening sense that we are witnesses to, and participants in, yet another chapter in the ongoing story of the end of money. Indeed, if the current crisis ‘feels’ like a (global) financial one rather than a (global) economic one, it is

14 15 “Where’s the Money, Lebowski?” Making Ends Meet clearly because the one concept, which is hit hardest by it, period coinciding with the transformative moment in eco- is that of money as “the crystallized relationship between nomic history referred to above) sought to counter, if not debtor and creditor” (in Niall Ferguson’s formulation, see undo in its entirety, by way of severing the idea of art from note 3), or, more straightforwardly, as “a medium of ex- its agreed-upon point of anchorage in material, object- change that can be used to purchase goods and services” – based form, and surrendering the art object as such. an age-old definition whose contours can hardly be dis- Indeed, in most standard art histories of the post-war era, cerned anymore beneath the financial wizardry that has the 1971 – 1973 period of monetary crisis stands enshrined given us such hallucinatory constructs as structured invest- as the apogee of the Concept Art revolution – the glory ment vehicles, debt-for-equity or credit-default swaps, years of what has long been known, in the words of American collateralized debt obligations and, most plastically, toxic art critic Lucy Lippard, as the “dematerialization of the assets. Clearly, the hypertrophy of debt-related jargon in art object.”6 In other words, we are talking of one form of 6 recent years serves to remind us of the central role that dematerialization shadowing another. Not for the first time Lucy Lippard, Six Years: The Demate- rialization of the Art Object from 1966 debt, as “the condition of owing something to somebody,” in both histories, the end of money appeared to converge to 1972, New York: Praeger, 1973. plays in the current financial crisis – a crisis spawned by with the end of (a certain conception) of art. money that essentially isn’t there, but which has been 7 Richard Sennett, The Culture of the transformed into a commodity nevertheless. 2. Interlude New Capitalism, New Haven: Yale Uni- Although most of us have no easy way of knowing versity Press, 2006, p. 16. Here again, what is meant with these various technical terms, it is One could of course argue that the concept of the end of art it is worth remembering how much Marx’s famous image of “all that is understandably tempting to interpret the incomprehensi- is as old as the concept of art as such, for, philosophically solid melting into air,” conjured in the bility of contemporary finance – “Planet Finance,” in Niall speaking, both concepts belong together as historical opening pages of The Communist Ferguson’s semi-partisan terms – as yet another instance artifacts; both the concept of art and the concept of the Manifesto, retrospectively sounds like a foreshadowing of the “demateriali- of the evaporation of money, its disappearance and descent, end of art as we know them are rooted in one and the same zation of the art object,” from Marcel rather than its ascent.3 3 philosophical tradition. The very notion of the end (as in Duchamp’s Air de Paris and Piero According to most standard historiographies (that is Niall Ferguson, The Ascent of Money, the death of the subject, the end of history, the death of Manzoni’s Artist’s Breath, via Robert Harmondsworth: Penguin, 2009. “The Morris’ Steam and Hans Haacke’s to say, not just Marxist ones), the “descent of money” was Descent of Money” is the title Ferguson art, the end of money, etc.) has accompanied the history Condensation Cube, all the way to – decisively inaugurated by the string of events that started has given to the postscript to his of time as such, just like the notion of ‘crisis’ may well be the most dramatic and appropriate with the termination of the Bretton Woods system of mone- “Financial History of the World.” That the one constant factor coursing throughout the whole of example of all – Bill Drummond and Ferguson’s is not an economic history tary management in 1971 – a moment in economic history modern occidental history. Yet, one of the very basic char- Jimmy Cauty’s K Foundation Burn a of the world is worth emphasizing Million Quid. more commonly referred to as the end of the gold standard – here, as the distinction between acteristics of our apocalyptically inclined culture is that and culminated in the oil crisis of 1973, precipitating stock finance and economy is indeed crucial it imagines itself to experience a qualitatively new kind of to our current discussion, much like market crashes, trade deficits, spiking interest rates and it is crucial to our understanding of crisis all the time, effectively stumbling from one crisis unprecedented rates of inflation alike. Interestingly enough, the current crisis as one that concerns (‘end’) to the next. In the admittedly crude terms of Marxist as David Harvey put it: “the breakdown of money as a the reigning system of financial flows economic theory, this is probably because modern occi- rather than trade flows. secure means of representing value” – the gist, in essence, dental history is, in essence, a capitalist history: the dawn of what has come to be known as the “Nixon shock” – of the modern era also witnessed the emergence of a “itself created a crisis of representation in advanced capital- capitalist economy, and every subsequent chapter in the ism.”4 And here again money immediately proved to be 4 history of ‘modernity’ has in large part been written in the very important in the history of art. As an immediate con- David Harvey, op. cit., p. 298. shadow of that capitalist economy’s momentous develop- My emphasis in italics. sequence of the dollar’s severance from the notion of real ments. Indeed, as Richard Sennett puts it, “instability since value (however arbitrarily anchored in gold), “money con- Marx’s day may seem capitalism’s only constant”7 – the sequently became useless as a means of storing value for iron law of Nietzschean “creative destruction,” in Joseph any length of time,” so that “alternative means had to be Schumpeter’s celebrated formulation. found to store value effectively. And so began the vast What were the economic circumstances, one inflation in certain kinds of asset prices – collectibles, art wonders, of the most influential formulation of the end-of- objects, antiques, houses, and the like.”5 To a certain extent, 5 art thesis known to man? Let us reiterate the well-known then, it may appear as if the descent of money effectively Ibid. passage in Hegel’s Introductory Lectures on Aesthetics, triggered the ascent of art – if we are content, that is, to delivered in Heidelberg in 1816 and further developed in perpetuate the confusion of “art and its markets.” But it Berlin in 1820 – 1821, in quasi-completeness: is precisely this confusion that the most important artistic developments of the late sixties and early seventies (the

16 Dieter Roelstraete 17 “Where’s the Money, Lebowski?” Making Ends Meet The peculiar mode to which artistic production and philosophical project of German Romanticism (in whose works of art belong no longer satisfies our supreme need. shadow much of our own thinking around and about art and We are above the level at which works of art can be culture continues to flourish). And irony has been perhaps venerated as divine, and actually worshipped; the im- the key factor in the history of art “after the end of art.”10 10 pression which they make is of a more considerate One particular quote from Hegel’s kind, and the feelings which they stir within us require Introductory Lectures on Aesthetics will (hopefully) help to illuminate my a higher test and a further confirmation. Thought and 3. Quaalude point: “if Irony is taken as the keynote reflection have taken their flight above fine art. (…) Oh irony: whether we are living through late capitalism of the representation, this means that Therefore, our present in its universal condition is not the supremely inartistic is taken as (Mandel), new capitalism (Sennett) or the new spirit of capit- favorable to art. As regards the artist himself, it is not the true principle of the work of art.” merely that the reflection which finds utterance all alism (Boltanski & Chiapello), most well-informed observers (Op. cit., p. 74.) The basic recipe for seem to agree that, for quite some time now, capitalism Marcel Duchamp’s readymade, in other round him, and the universal habit of having an opinion words – the first in a long line of con- and passing judgment about art infect him, and mis- has been the only game in town. Insofar as we are still happy tenders to claim the crown of the post- lead him into putting more abstract thought into his to use Marx’s circumscription of the phenomenon, then, artistic realm of artistic production. works themselves; but also the whole spiritual culture this means that the accumulation of capital in private hands “After the End of Art” is the title of a collection of essays published by of the age is of such a kind that he himself stands continues unabated, and largely unchallenged. It appears Arthur C. Danto in 1998, fourteen years within this reflective world and its condition, and it is nonsensical, therefore, to assert that the age of money (as after he published an essay titled impossible for him to abstract from it by will and resolve, the most common form of capital) has come to an end. “The End of Art” in a book titled “The or to contrive for himself and bring to pass, by means Pronouncements of “the end of money” seem just as pre- Death of Art” – can anyone really feign of peculiar education or removal from the relations of surprise that anthologies with titles mature and misguided as pronouncements of “the end of such as “Essays After Danto” have life, a peculiar solitude that would replace all that is lost. art”; after all, never in the history of art has there been so since seen the light of day? Danto has In all these respects art is, and remains for us, on the much art, and never in the history of money has money long been known for his ability to side of its highest destiny, a thing of the past. Herein it date the so-called end of art to a very mattered this much. Money is, it may sometimes seem, the has further lost for us its genuine truth and life, and precise day – that of the opening of only game in town. (Also, returning to our initial obser- Andy Warhol’s exhibition of Brillo boxes rather is transferred into our ideas than asserts its former vations concerning Hirst, Messina and co.: never in the at the Stable Gallery in New York in necessity, or assumes its former place, in reality. (…) 1964. Therefore, the science of art is a much more pressing history of art has money mattered as much, and never in need in our day than in times in which art, simply as art, the history of money has art mattered as much.) 11 Wading into the troubled water of 8 8 How are we to work our way out of this aporetic was enough to furnish a full satisfaction. money’s philosophical relationship to G. W. F. Hegel, Introductory Lectures irony? Perhaps the key critical shift may be located in religious belief (or more generally, on Aesthetics, Harmondsworth: religion) would surely lead us too far It is worth rereading this passage and replacing ‘art’ with Penguin, 1993, p. 12 – 13. admitting to the fact that both money and art are indeed no ‘money’ throughout – the essence, in essence, remains longer ‘here’ (there), but that we’re only pretending astray, but it is worth considering the basic tenet of the leap of faith that 9 intact: whatever has come to an end (art or money), has they’re still ‘here’ (there). More precisely: some pretend, characterizes the religious world-view F. W. J. Schelling, The Philosophy of Art, been supplanted by reflection upon it; or, alternatively, with varying degrees of malicious intent, that art and as such: credo quia absurdum, or Minneapolis: University of Minnesota “I believe because it is absurd.” The whatever has come to an end has done so because it was Press, 1989, p. 10. The “fortunate money are still there, while others really don’t know they same could certainly be said about age of production” referred to in this being reflected upon too much, in part by the likes of Hegel aren’t there anymore. In the field of money, the humble both art and money, which are really passage concerns the time of Dürer himself (when he ventures that “the science of art is a quotidian device that is the credit card occupies a position only worth believing in if we accept and Raphael – Cervantes and the absurdity of the claims on which much more pressing need in our day” he of course means Caldéron working at the same time as of symbolic centrality in this regard. It is the channel for their respective systems are built. his science of art first and foremost). Or, in the words of Shakespeare. Hegel’s and Schelling’s the transmission of money that never was ours in the first Hegel’s traveling companion (and, ultimately, rival) Friedrich time was of course above all an age place (and thus was never really ‘there’ to be spent), but of criticism and reflection; even its Schelling, as written down in his equally eschatologically- leading literary lights (Goethe, Novalis, that is believed to have been ours (by each creditor who minded Philosophy of Art: “When such a fortunate age of Schiller, the Schlegel brothers) were accepts the card). Credit, after all, is a direct descendant of pure production has passed, reflection enters, and with it an occasionally more respected as critics the Latin verb for believing, credere; credit literally means than as creators of literary fiction in 11 element of estrangement. What was earlier living spirit is their own right. “he believes.” The credit card, that magical object of so now transmitted theory.”9 Much like the owl of Minerva, who much confidence and good faith, truly is the paradigmatic only flies out after the dark, a true philosophy of art can expression of a culture that has reconciled itself with the only come into being once art itself has set in an inexorable complete virtualization of money – that which we earlier on decline – and much the same may be true of money, referred to as dematerialization or evaporation. Credit especially in view of the intimacy of art and money’s shared lies one step further still than the gradual disappearance of history. It doesn’t quite suffice to call this turn of events money into the electronic maelstrom of bits and bytes, merely “ironic” – for irony, after all, is the very essence zeroes and ones (electronic money may be both invisible of the German Romantics’ philosophy of art, if not of the and immaterial, but at least it can still be mine).

18 Dieter Roelstraete 19 “Where’s the Money, Lebowski?” Making Ends Meet In the field of art, one could identify a comparable shift to for discourse, has come to occupy the place once allotted to have taken place in the gradual occlusion of the very idea art, or succeeded in obscuring it, this must necessarily of art by the growing importance of the notion of the art mean that the art world, as a world, is in fact built upon or world and the corresponding inflationary growth of art around something that is not, or no longer, there – an discourse on the one hand, and in the dissolution of art absence, void, or empty center: the divine hole in the middle into the broader sphere of culture on the other hand.12 On 12 of the ontological donut (I am reminded here, inevitably, the one hand, we could say that what is being talked about It is worth remembering here that the of Lawrence Weiner’s call to “take the bagel from Hegel”). title of the essay in which Danto first as art, or referred to as art, is no longer art – we just pre- articulated his intimations of a true And this may well be a good thing, much like the per- tend or believe it is – but rather mere commentary upon end-of-art scenario was quite simply ennially empty chair at the dinner table – one never knows art (compare this to Schelling’s lamentation quoted above), “The Artworld” (first delivered as a who (or what) may be coming to dinner. And secondly, lecture at a symposium titled “The much of which also pretends or believes itself to be art, Work of Art” only a couple of months if money isn’t there (anymore) either, something else like credit pretending to be money – and there certainly after seeing Warhol’s aforementioned or other must be found – a formidable challenge, but also appears to exist a connection here with the hypertrophy of Brillo box exhibition in New York); it a fantastically stimulating one. Indeed, maybe art can starts, by way of quotation, with the art-about-art, or art-about-the-art-world, in the last two following memorable exchange be brought back to help us find this ‘other’ – or become it decades in particular (the same time span during which the between Hamlet and the Queen of instead, as in the art I was given to write about in turn. art market went through a series of exponential growth Denmark: “Q: Do you see nothing there? A: Nothing at all. Yet all that is I see.” spurts, in other words), as well as with the sheer excess Towards the end, Danto ventures that of discursive attention paid to art in writing and words “What in the end makes the difference during that same period (which the current essay know- between a Brillo box and a work of art consisting of a Brillo box is a certain ingly – and gleefully! – participates in, of course, just as it theory of art. It is the theory that takes gleefully and guiltily participates in the problematic cult it up into the world of art, and keeps it of referentiality, as both its title and profusion of footnotes from collapsing into the real object clearly attest). On the other hand, we could concur with which it is (in a sense of is other than that of artistic identification). Of Alain Badiou that “the name ‘culture’ [has come] to ob- course, without the theory, one is un- literate that of ‘art’,” and here too we must refer to a key likely to see it as art, and in order to aspiration of all vanguard art movements of the last century, see it as part of the artworld, one must have mastered a good deal of artistic all the way from Dada to Concept Art’s ten-point-program theory as well as a considerable for the dematerialization of the art object – the dissolution amount of the history of recent New of art into life.13 Now this particular call, like so many York painting.” In: The Journal of Phil- osophy, Volume 61, Issue 19, p. 581. erstwhile battle cries of both the political and artistic avant- garde (these things used to be interchangeable once), has 13 of course proven singularly successful in that, historically Alain Badiou, Saint Paul: The Foun- dation of Universalism, Stanford: speaking, art truly has been dissolved into life – without Stanford University Press, 2003, p. 12. life becoming much more artful or aesthetically pleasing as It is important to point out that for a consequence, alas. And what is more, it has done so at Badiou, art is one of four fields of human activity (along with science, the exact moment when life itself became increasingly sub- politics and love) capable of yielding ject to the irrevocable logic of total commodification: if it truth. In this sense, the French maître- is now near-impossible to imagine art outside the market, penseur’s contemptuous notion of how much more difficult still it has become to imagine life culture is not terribly different from the Frankfurter Schule’s tried-and- outside the market! tested formula of the culture industry. According to one slightly more up- Let us conclude, however, on a note of cautious optimism – dated variation on this theme, artists, critics and curators alike are today all for the end of art may not be such a bad thing after all (the active in the entertainment industry. art world, which comes after is not the worst world – it The very notion of industrialization may even be the best of all possible worlds right now), and (or, alternately, administration) in these various formulas only adds further the same may be true of the end of money as we have weight to the importance of commerce understood it throughout this speculative exercise. Let us (hence money) in their construction. imagine ways of making both ends, that of art and that of money, meet: firstly, if the complex known as the art world, complete with its market and its discourse and its market

20 Dieter Roelstraete 21 “Where’s the Money, Lebowski?” Making Ends Meet 22 Tonel 23 Notes on Improperties ______6______5______Hadley+Maxwell ____4______3______2___ _1_

1 . I m - a) (before adjectives) Not ie. not proper b) (before nouns) Without or lacking ie. without properties

2 . P r o p e r a) (attributive) Genuine, in something’s true form. b) (attributive) Suitable or appropriate. c) (predicative: proper to) belonging or relating to, particular to. d) (archaic) belonging to itself; own ie. “I saw it with my proper eyes.”

3. Improper Not in accordance with accepted rules or standards (especially morality or honesty); lacking in modesty or decency.

4. Property a) Possessions, some thing or things belonging to someone. b) An attribute, quality, or characteristic of something.

5. Improperty

6. Improperties

We think of the word improperties like an image, a cubist drawing or collage. Thereby every part of the word can work in a paradoxical balance between holding its own autono- mous meaning and reacting to the linguistic influences that surround it; both improper and proper, wherein the meaning of one persists despite of and dependent upon its companion(s). Improperties take form in the process of collaboration and how it exercises authorship. Thomas Hirschhorn writes on (non-)collaboration: “…Unshared Responsibility means I am completely responsible for the work of my friend, and it means that my friend takes complete responsibility for my

24 25 Notes on Improperties work … Unshared Responsibility means to be absolutely A cursory, but not impulsive, selection of findings (in committed to the work of the other, to take it for what aphoristic form) gathered from working under the term makes its strength: a sovereign affirmation. To work in “improperties:” Unshared Responsibility means to take the responsibility for something I am not responsible for.”1 This describes how 1 responsibility, and thus propriety, can overlap the same Thomas Hirschhorn, as quoted in 1 . I m - Bridge online journal (http://www. property and yet not interfere with autonomy; how some- bridgecollaborationjournal.tumblr. – Not, as in “a cut.” thing is absolutely mine (when I say “mine” it is only com; last accessed: 11 August 2011), – Not appropriate nor appropriation, yet expropriation mine) yet at the same time necessarily belongs to all of you from an interview with Abraham (even from itself). Cruzvillegas in Bomb online magazine (when you use the word “mine” it is yours). (http://www.bombsite.com/issues/ – Not now, but not not now. Words are shared but not divided between us. We 113/articles/3621; last accessed: 22 – A force that holds you positively to your un-doing, purely feel the same about artworks, the ones we make together June 2011). transitive: “Like that little drum in your ear / Transfixes and put our names to. Though our image of collaboration you to your fear….”4 4 differs from Hirschhorn’s – in as much as we still call our – Life’s dark face, the support of a face, as in the hollowing Siouxie and the Banshees, “Voodoo Dolly,” from Juju, Polydor Records, work collaborative and for us negotiation is a major part out that makes a mask or façade what it is. 1981. of production – we like his term “Unshared Responsibility” – Not to be confused with a curse or with oblivion, but more for how it describes authorship, and even the use of pure than either because it simply separates without language or other tools of presentation. Lisa Robertson also judgment. says something precise that describes the unshared site of – An arrow pointing outside of language, exemplarily intelligibility: “If I pretend to see, I enter into visibility.”2 2 described by enigmas. A signature is the movement of a sign to a signified Lisa Robertson, “Perspectors/ Melancholia,” in Hadley+Maxwell, to a thing, and artworks are therefore signatures of our Smart Project Space, Amsterdam, desire to appear. Boris Groys describes this in a recent 2010. 2 . P r o p e r article as “self-exposure,” and suggests that the artist is a – Everything you have to lose. “professional subject” (as opposed to the “involuntary – The sphere of the appropriate and the fear of taste. subject” that describes “everybody else”) who manifests – Joinery, as in skillful carpentry, or crafty demonstration. “the inner contradictions of modern subjectivation in a – The beauty of and fascination with geometry. paradigmatic way.”3 He gets here by identifying subjectivity 3 – The beginnings of what we know at the verge of becoming with visibility, subjectivation with exposure: “Our bodies Boris Groys, “Artistic Self-Exposure,” products. Frieze d/e, Issue 1, summer 2011, are submitted to permanent visualization; this is how they pp. 79 – 83. – The conceit of the concept, but also the very joy of become subjects.”3 presupposition. A mirror is an example of an improperty, both a site – An over-weaning belief in the transcendence of nouns or that (lightly) holds an aspectual image, and an object that thinglyness. expresses itself – something that is a property, displays – The oathless dimension of the oath. properties, and is also improper in that the images it displays – A domestication of accidents, or the formalization of are dependent upon the perceiver’s relationship to the sense and play. site where the image appears. The mirror is also its image – – Secular mysticism. a signature of my desire to perceive, and thus to appear. – “How”-centred art. – Not to be confused with similarities or utopianisms but far more conservative, like when one sees a clean-cut piece of maple and exclaims “That is wood!” or like the claim that everything is only relative, a matter of framing, etc. – The nauseating feeling that occurs when an argument’s terms are caught between the universal and the particular. – In rare cases (that are usually heavily endorsed), knowing the point of perfection.

26 Hadley+Maxwell 27 Notes on Improperties 3. Improper – The names that are given to objects, as in, the gestures of – The thrill of thievery or defacement. giving-over what is available to appear. Many names are – The confidence of leaving something to itself, or finishing inherited. it and departing. – a) Something to peculate (or embezzle), from Latin – The erotic charge and repulsion of a stain, but more in “peculium” or property, as in: with the invention of the the way it lingers in the memory. As in: living with a bad train, also the train wreck. See also “peculiar” as in hair-cut; trying to see through another’s eyes; or believing “peculiar to” or “belonging exclusively to”; but also, b) that two heads are better than one. something to steal, as in “The mirror steals the virtue – The injunction against representation. of a pool of water so we can regard ourselves erect.” – The charm and horror of maligned or faulty images, awk- – Provides access to feelings of divinity or sovereignty. ward postures, fallen cakes or heroes, and earnest – The indistinction between ownership and opinion and representations of the political. their ultimate triumph over reason, due process, or – The triumph of parody; the cry of humble misfortunes. intuition, as in: “The new ID cards include retinal scans – Nervously: walking into a food-court; sitting on a bus full and forty-nine items… they won’t stop your identity of familiar strangers; but also, discovering the secret of being stolen, it just means when it is you’re fucked: Karaoke. I’ve left my wallet in the hotel – I’m going to need new – The providence of adjectives. eyeballs and a finger transplant.”5 5 – The understanding that a simple Yes or No is sufficient Frankie Boyle, Live at the Apollo, http://www.youtube.com/ in accepting an oath. watch?v=JroZ4IvMEa4, accessed – The allure of the accidental. 5. Improperty January 14, 2011). – The beauty of a scaffold or a court-yard garden that has – The episteme of examples, or what we can know about become a cage. things. For instance when we allow light to bounce – The distance between the front and the back of a mask off, pour through, brush along, but also distort, blind, or or a stage. dematerialize objects of affection. – Not to be confused with dialectical anxieties, it can dispell – To speak in examples, not to be confused with post- their binding forces. modernity or simply things, but rather allowing one – An opening onto the “why” in art, but also the fetish of particularity to exert itself on another and vice versa: an deconstructionists, as in, when one allows oneself to pro- uprising or surge of understanding between the two. visionally answer an ongoing stream of “why?” questions – The inheritance of a history, more in the sense of clearing coming from a child. an estate, whereby one learns of many things that are – An over-productive “suchness” that scatters objects of hidden from ordinary view. articulation in space the way archives do, resulting in two – Research method that embraces errantry, accidental extremes: a) to be at home with either a sketch or an findings, and the joy of side-effects. overly developed ad-hoc plan or course of action; or b) the dividing up of space when it is obviously too much, or out of an irrepressible “we can’t go on like this anymore.” 6. Improperties – Easing the stakes of an action for better or worse. – Nothing less than all of the above. – The liberation of what we have learned from what we know.

4. Property – Evidence of the tendency to articulate things in terms of possession, curiously without recourse to magic or exorcism. – The Musak of Capitalism, commonly confused with rights, identity, or the process of naming. The becoming brand of the name. – Hostile to petty notions like time or intuition. – The coaxing into appearance of thingly opacity.

28 Hadley+Maxwell 29 Notes on Improperties 30 Tonel 31 Five Acts of Money I n t e r e s t She was young and entered law school with no desire to do so. Learning Carolina Sanín things that were of no interest to her day in, day out – her only interest being to watch the years go by, first one then a second until five had passed – made her feel she was living a life as certain as poverty. Taking time away from the future without embarking on what she wanted to do was like counting the money she lacked to buy the things she would have wanted had she been able to imagine the money needed to want them. She was good with words and bad with numbers. She had been born in a country and in a home where some professions were regarded as true and others false. Of those that were true, the only one that seemed to contain words and no numbers was law. Among those that were false was literature: not only did it suffer from the inconvenience of promising almost assured poverty, it was also a kind of distortion of another path. It seemed to her that it seemed to others that law was the true profession of literature, though it is possible that no one thought this, that no one had any thoughts on the matter at all. The fact is that it never occurred to her to study literature. She did not connect literature with the process of passing from one landscape of her life to the next. Perhaps she had been encouraged to believe that she ought to learn a profession that would allow her to make money, in other words, one that would, one day, allow her to live on her own in a place where she could decide who entered and what they were allowed to bring in with them. Time spent without interest would eventually lead to property. The role of the uninterested guest would turn into the part of the hostess. Empty time would become a home where at last no one would encourage her to believe anything. In her first semester at university, she was obliged to take a course on Roman law. Twenty years on, she remembers just one scene in which Caius sold a horse to Lucius for a hundred sesterces. Her entire past as a student of law consists of this contract; the portion of the past spent in her first period of university education was limited to this one transaction. But when she remembered the sesterces for the first time, that afternoon, they were not what she had intended to recall. She had not set out to remember anything. She wanted to ask whether the Earth grew over time, as if it were gestating another body, if the Earth grew as things eroded and the dust settled. If archaeologists dug down and found houses buried under the dust, and these houses were underneath, this meant that people and animals and plants were living higher and higher up, further and further out, that the Earth was getting bigger. She wanted to know who was supposed to know about the endless dust, whether it was archaeologists, geologists, waste specialists, economists, or me. And when she pondered this question, what came to her was not an answer but the memory of her course on Roman law. Marcus was selling Julius a slave for a hundred sesterces. In Rome, in imperial times. In 1990, in a class during which she had probably drifted off, thinking for the first time about the circumference of the Earth. There was a path that wended its way through the recollection of the hundred sesterces and the question of the fate of the dust that fattened the Earth and was the thinning of things. Marcus and Julius and the horse

32 33 Five Acts of Money had, with the earth of their bodies, increased the soil in which olive trees Explaining the title of the book by way of the name of the family seemed grew. But the sesterces were different. There were old coins in museums, irrelevant to her. Marco Polo’s Il milione was Marco Polo’s million: the of course. Sesterces were and had been metal. But they were the equivalent abundance of the traveler. The million was the imaginable plenteous world of a horse in one example or a slave in another. Their number created the and it was, for the reader, money belonging to someone else. The million scene in which a certain imaginable Gaius met a certain imaginable Caius was an amount that was endlessly counted and which replaced the house, in certain circumstances and they both wanted a horse. Or it selected a which was one and which was Aemilione, different from il milione. scene from a forgotten past and put her in mind of it again. The coins In another lecture, she spoke of another millionaire, Trimalchio, raised ghosts, they marked the path back and forth between Marcus and an immensely rich freedman who appeared in Petronius’ Satyricon Julius and between Caius and Gaius and, twelve centuries later, they hosting a remarkable banquet at which the guests were not allowed to were exchanged for letters of credit and their amount, translated into leave by the same door through which they had entered. At the entrance other currencies, was the equivalent of the length of a traveler’s journey. to Trimalchio’s house was a mural that told the owner’s story: while a Although, of course, money did not live like this but in a manner she slave, he had learned to count money and with this skill had set out on would never know. the path to abundance and freedom. The unfolding of Trimalchio’s million She transferred to the arts faculty a year after learning the word was another book of the wonders of the world; the banquet itself, a world sesterce and studied literature for four years and then another seven. anxious to complete itself, reality unceasingly transporting to this ex- Afterwards, she began to teach. One day, when she had lived this life that hausting feast its produce transformed into dreams from all over the vast filled three pages, she saw a puppy being born in her home. The dog’s lands that the host possessed and had never visited. His guests ate, eyes were closed and it could see nothing. All it did was grow while it slept. listened to songs and reprimands, and watched the dancing. They were It died before its eyes opened. It died in no time at all, nothing. It was invited to defecate and to carry on drinking. During the feast, the host never going to open its eyes. So she began to think about her education made freedmen of slaves, he punished and pardoned, and he turned some again and her lack of interest in so many things while life went by, and things into others. about the vague interest she had retained in certain things that were He counted his possessions as he recounted his story, how in almost worthless (a hundred sesterces) after she had invested so much selling himself he had been able to buy himself. He equated tongue with of nothing in them. She tried thinking about the Earth swelling as time tongue, making puns on the various dishes, and matched verbs with went by, growing like the sleeping puppy and growing with the dead puppy, names, identities with duties. “Carver! Carve her!”, he would order his and about the interest on the hundred sesterces, which she had heard servant, and it so happened that the name of the person in charge of about one day, that had accumulated over twenty years, maybe turning carving the meat in Trimalchio’s house was Carver. the hundred into a million. The meal was a spectacle. Everything was edible, but before being consumed, it changed form and name thanks to the workings of money. Trimalchio had a hen arranged, laying peahen eggs, which the astonished Millionaires guests realized, when they went to eat them, were made of flour. He had Her first job lecturing in literature was at Purchase College in New York a hare served with wings attached to it. There were fish and fowl made of state. She felt slightly embarrassed when mentioning the name of the pork. college to someone unfamiliar with it, afraid that they might think she Trimalchio was able to make two days out of one. A cockerel some- taught at a school to do with shopping. where in the neighborhood crowed during the feast, and he had it brought In one of her classes, she read Marco Polo’s book with her students. to him and ordered that it be cooked. At last, when the guests and un- The Venetian had recounted his travels to Rustichello da Pisa, a fellow invited spongers were exhausted and keen to escape his magnanimity, prisoner in Genoa. Rustichello transcribed Polo’s account while trans- and just as the reader is wondering how else life might be consumed and lating it into a form of French that contained an element of Italian. Polo money lived, the millionaire staged his own funeral: he had his will read, told of the wonders on the other side of the world, of the part that com- gave instructions on his funerary monument (which was to portray him pleted the world and made it a round and desirable number. The book giving away money), ordered that mournful music should be played, and was entitled Description of the World and Book of the Wonders of the World, lamented his own death, which was not occurring. but it was popularized under the title Il milione, the million. It is said Years later, back in Colombia, she continued to talk about money. that the title does not stem from the exaggerations, excesses, and wealth She taught a course on the Spanish Golden Age, the age of American gold. of details and descriptions contained in the book but that it is a corruption She talked about the million that pulsated in every baroque metaphor, of the name Aemilione, which Marco’s family took to distinguish them- and of how they all stemmed from the great metaphor of gold: the selves from other Venetian Polos. alchemists’ search for gold, which symbolized the soul’s search for per- A possible title for Marco Polo’s travels would thus be The Million fection so that it might enter the other world, which symbolized the by Marco Polo of the Million Polos, who are not the million Polos about Conquistadors’ voyage to the New World, the world beyond, where they the place but the Million Polos. might become other than what they were and thus transcend their own

34 Carolina Sanín 35 Five Acts of Money lives, so that they might continue to live on after putting an end to their Dorothy Parker wrote a story called The Standard of Living. In it, two first life, crowned by the fame of a new name. She spoke of the gold that working women, who eat whatever cheap and greasy food New York has becomes future and which the natives gave to the Spaniards in exchange to offer, play the game of asking each other what they would do if they for beads with which time could be counted, and for mirrors in which man were suddenly to come into a million dollars. They are walking along Fifth sees his present. Avenue, telling each other what they would buy. On one occasion, one During another course, she read Santa Evita, Tomás Eloy Martínez’s of the women says to the other that she would buy a fox fur coat. The novel on the toings and froings of Eva Perón’s corpse. With regard to the other chides her, saying that everyone has a fox fur coat. The first woman famous phrase “I will return and I will be millions” that Evita is said to have changes her mind, without conviction, and says that she would buy a uttered, Martínez wondered where she intended to return to and what mink coat instead. Her friend tells her, also half-heartedly, that a mink would she be millions of. The selfsame phrase was attributed to Spartacus would be much better. But then the first woman changes her mind. The and to Tupac Katari, a Bolivian Indian rebel who apparently pronounced first thing she would buy, she says, is a real pearl necklace. Shortly after it before being murdered by the colonial authorities. She would have to this conversation, the two women come to a jeweler’s. They wonder how understand money before attempting to grasp that idea of returning as much the double-string pearl necklace in the window might cost. One millions, of multiplying in the next life instead of merging and dissolving, guesses a thousand dollars. I cannot remember how much the other one before imagining that political fantasy, that alternative to mystical says but I think it was at most three times the amount the first one aspiration. believed. They dare each other to go in and ask. They enter and, in order One day she was invited to a literary gathering organized each week to give themselves an air of self-confidence and to make out they have by a wealthy woman from Bogotá. She found the address up in the hills enough money to be interested in what they desire, or instead that they overlooking the city and entered an apartment big enough to house a desire it so little that they are in a position to buy it, they put the question theater. Of the forty or fifty women who had been invited to attend, she in a disdainful manner. The salesman politely informs them that the was the only one who did not yearn to meet a poet. Pierced and wounded pearls cost three hundred thousand dollars (they are not just pearls, the by beauty, these millionairesses longed to know beauty, just as Psyche necklace has an emerald clasp). They leave and, back out on the street, longed to know Cupid. An old man on a rostrum was reading aloud. complain to each other. They are indignant. How could anyone dare to She thought about the aspirations that brought people to the world ask that much for that? A few steps further on, one of the two restarts the of plenty. In the past, indianos, the name given to Spaniards who returned game. She has modified it and asks her friend what she would do if some- home from the Americas having made their fortune, would grow palm one suddenly left her a hundred million dollars. trees in their gardens and have pineapples carved in the lintels of the doors Tomás and I talked one night about what you should do about to their houses, which they built with the millions they had made selling something you feel guilty about even though you are not sorry you did it. slaves. I confessed that every ten years I am overcome by a fear that I will go to Once rich, the new millionaires set about stealing the beauty that hell. We were walking along the street where I did what I am sometimes belonged to others. What happened was more complicated than the afraid will send me to hell, which is also something I feel guilty about even attempts of new money to become old, or the bourgeoisie’s desire to pass though I do not regret doing it. It is a long street. Just as we were setting for aristocracy. Beauty, the attainment of metaphors, was the ambition off down it, Tomás told me that in buying the lottery ticket, he was paying of all money, new and old alike. Every millionaire was an arriviste. The in order to imagine what he would do and what he would be able to gold he owned inevitably reminded him of that other gold, the gold above desire if he won. Thinking about it without a pretext, driven solely by want, and the gold on the other side, the metaphorical gold that the Americas did not really stir hope but instead barely offered a subject to ponder over. had been. In contrast, on reading the prize-winning number on the ticket, he made two days out of one, for a while. I sometimes think it is true that you always know what time it is B e t t i n g without needing to look at a clock or the sun. Guessing the time is one Every day, millions of people indulge in the game of imagining what they of those things that any healthy person can do. Moreover, when you would do if they were to win the lottery. I suspect that we would all of us remember something you did, you can always say what time of day you like to own a theater, to take our seats and watch the spectacle of others did it. Perhaps you also always know the price of things without needing playing their parts on our stage, to describe as a “wonder of the world” all to ask. that was presented before us, presence itself. Now that you have read the paragraph above, which is so out of Tomás bought a lottery ticket with a number I regularly come place, you should take a dollar, a peso, or one of any currency and imagine across. We had fish for supper and went to sleep, forgetting to check the that that money is mine. You do not need to send it to me or keep it or winning numbers. A week later, I remembered. Tomás told me he had spend it on something I specify. Spend it on whatever you like or give it remembered to look the day before. to someone else, but when you do, consider that it is my money you are handing over. The relationship thus established between you and me, will

36 Carolina Sanín 37 Five Acts of Money it represent the relationship forged and diluted at the moment you read café where they served cappuccino coffee with complimentary chocolate and then stop reading what I have written? Or will it endorse it? And that coins. On Fridays, when she had added up the drawn coins, instead of relationship, is it a transaction or a circulation? going to sleep and dreaming she would lie awake, waiting for those fake Unlike Tomás, I find it difficult to say what I would do if I suddenly coins. When she was younger, her father had taken her into the vault of came into a lot of money. Though I can try to desire a swimming pool of the Banco de la República, Colombia’s National Treasury, where he worked. my own to swim in. Rather than playing at saying what I would do if I were They descended underground. Someone opened the heaviest door in the given a million dollars, I prefer to imagine that everything I do during the world by turning a wheel that looked like that of a ship. The gold ingots day has a price: a hundred dollars for brushing my teeth, fifteen hundred that lined the walls represented bills and coins. There, in this vault, was for taking my dog for a walk in the morning, four thousand for taking her the spirit of all the money people used to buy things; therein was the out again in the evening, ten thousand dollars for eating an egg at midday, value of things. Her father safeguarded it. Not long afterwards, her father fifty dollars if at that very moment I peak through the blinds and look at would be as absent as millions of others, like the lottery prize. But he had what is going on outside, another three hundred if I feel the urge to do so taught her that serious yet smiling word, “ingots”. In the future, she but do not, a thousand dollars for retelling Dorothy Parker’s story, and a would choose to study words rather than numbers as she would feel that, hundred thousand if I put more money in my version than in the original. in visiting the gold with her father, she had already seen every number.

A c c o u n t s T h e E n d o f M o n e y She never expected to become a teacher, which is what she ended up as My wallet contains a compartment for coins. Amongst those that enter and once the future shrank. Nevertheless, she had invested a lot of afternoons then leave, there is a Cuban coin given to me by my friend Álvaro, who in being a teacher. When she had learned how to add, subtract, multiply sells old books. I do not remember exactly when I received this coin. It and divide, the game of the class list became her favorite. She would sit at must have been at least six months ago. I have kept it ever since. It is the desk in the study at her grandparents’ home, her back to the window, worth three pesos, an unusual amount to find written on a coin. On one facing towards the door, and she would invent a list of thirty girls’ names, side, it says “Patria o muerte” (Homeland or death) above a portrait of each with its own surname. Alongside each name, she drew eight boxes in Che Guevara. Perhaps they are not alternatives; perhaps the “o” (or) which she put the marks (from zero to five, with exact decimals) that implies that homeland and death are almost synonymous, almost indis- each of the girls had got in the exercises assigned during the course of the tinguishable, like when someone says “red or crimson.” day. One box was for the grade for a written composition in the Spanish It does not seem normal for a coin to carry the word three; equally class; one was for an exercise in the music class; another for the math it does not seem appropriate for a coin to bear the word death. This coin exam. The last box gave the overall mark for each pupil. The game lasted is rarely alone in the purse section of my wallet. Every day, when I go to for several hours. It consisted solely of inventing names in alphabetical pay for something, I open the purse and remember that in it I have a coin order and giving them grades. She looked up and positioned her class in that I cannot use to pay for anything, a gift from another world. And then the space between the window and the door: a pair of twins, a beautiful the coin seems to me to be a word rather than a number. I have to take it blonde girl, another orphan, and herself. She got five in everything bar one out into the light because by touch alone I can easily mistake it for a subject. The game would end and she would write a letter of congratulations two-hundred-peso coin. Then I put it back into the purse and this action, to the mother of her best pupil. The letters described her by emphasizing repeated so often, is becoming a nuisance. But I have not put the coin a different virtue each day. Those letters were worth a million. elsewhere because I cannot think of anywhere to put it. In my jewelry box? She had learned to add and subtract from an arithmetic book that In my library? Perhaps it will stay in my wallet till I die. I mean to say, had drawings of gold coins in it. She studied at night before going to sleep, until after I die. It will have been the most constant of all my things and tucked up in a bed that was not hers. Her mother sat beside her, holding the one to have lived in a place with the most inconstant of populations. the book. The bed was in her grandparents’ house, where she would A twenty-dollar bill was once taken away from me at a K-Mart store. be living while her parents went through their divorce proceedings. She When I went to pay with it, I did not know it was counterfeit. As soon as looked at the coins and said how many there were and how many were she touched it, the woman at the cash register knew. She called her boss, left. She read them and said how many pesos they added up to. She fell who folded the bill in half and used a pair of scissors to cut out a triangle asleep and dreamed. During the day, she would occasionally see real money along the fold. When he unfolded the bill, the triangle turned into a if her grandfather gave her twenty pesos to go and buy a comic. Her mother diamond-shaped hole. The man with the scissors put the bill up to his eye did not allow her to touch money with her bare hands. She had to use and looked at me through the diamond. I do not know if the real twenty sheets of toilet paper to take the bills and coins to avoid catching germs. dollars I had exchanged for my time stopped existing for me when some- Money was dirty like the ground. one gave me twenty fake dollars or when someone destroyed them right There was an unmarried aunt living in her grandparents’ house as in front of me. well. This aunt used to go to the movies. After the film, the aunt went to a

38 Carolina Sanín 39 Five Acts of Money I wanted to begin to learn a bit more about money. I thought about getting a credit card or a mortgage and going into debt in order to feel a sense of certainty that I would live a long time, and I did not do it. I sat down to watch a documentary on the latest financial crisis. I paused it time and time again and made the people being interviewed repeat their explana- tions, which I did not understand. I tried not to fall asleep. Banking jargon, “derivatives”, for instance, crept into my dreams, mutated and became a kind diagnosis that I would dictate to myself from the countryside. As I tossed and turned in my sleep, I thought I had discovered that, in order to think about money as if I had moved on to the next part of my life, I had to replace accounting with trust. I borrowed a book on securities from a law student who attends the workshop on narrative that I give at the university and who is also my cousin. I read that a check can still be drawn on after the person who wrote it has died. I already knew that you carry on paying after death. As a girl, I was fascinated by checks, which were like bills on which you could write, bills that included questions you had to answer. I began to write about money on May 22. That first day, I worked for an hour and had a rest, and then I read in a newspaper that, according to the prophecy of a man called Harold Camping, the world should have ended the day before. A lot of money had been paid for this end of the world that never happened. Across the whole of the United States and in other countries, Camping and his followers had had 2,000 billboards put up to tell people that May 21, 2011, was going to be the last day. They had spent the fruit of the days of their lives announcing their death. The press talked of the new poverty of a man who had donated his life savings to the erection of the billboards. A lot of coverage, curiously, was given to those who had spent on the billboards the money they had set aside for their children’s university education. Hope was the end of money. One last thing: I have often watched on television the first day of the lives of sea turtles. The mothers lay their eggs in the sand and leave. After a while, the baby turtles break out of their eggs and scramble down the sand towards the sea. Birds are vigilant on this day, the first for the turtles but one like any other to them, and hurl themselves at the newborn creatures. They rain down like arrows and devour the turtles, one after another, hundreds upon hundreds. A few turtles make it to the water and start to swim. But for the other million, their first day is their last. They have a shell, eyes, speed, color and hunger, and all this is merely expendi- ture for death. The birds eat, the species survives thanks to the few turtles that manage to escape, and I am moved at the sight of this law, as I sit in front of the television, incapable of calculating the value of all this life, a life so brief.

Translated from the Spanish by Sue Brownbridge.

40 Carolina Sanín 41 On 1 February 1845, Karl Marx signed a contract with the publisher Carl Leske for his first major work on political economy, a two-volume work entitled Kritik der Politik und Nationalökonomie, to be based largely on the manuscripts he had written in Paris in 1844. Signed in Paris, where Marx was living at the time, the contract provided Marx with a 1,500-franc advance on the 3,000-franc fee to be paid in full upon completion of the two volumes. Two years later Leske cancelled the contract with Marx, who never finished the work. The photograph here shows the verso of Marx’s copy of the contract, which is held in the archives of the International Institute of Social History in Amsterdam.

42 Zachary Formwalt 43 The End of Coins, the Triumph We have a tendency to think that we have left Hegel behind. of Money, and the Disruptive But the suggestion of such a shift in recent philosophical Revolution of Art and intellectual history still has to contend with the over- whelming impact his thought continues to have. Francis 1 Donatien Grau Fukuyama’s “end of history,” or Arthur Danto’s reinter- 1 pretation of the “death of art”2 seemed to indicate that by Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man, Free Press, New the 1990s we had reached a point of no return and a York, 1992. momentum in the triumph of Hegelianism in Western phil- osophy: Continental thought had even gained the United 2 Arthur C. Danto, After the End of Art. States… After having had such a passion for Hegelian dia- Contemporary Art and the Pale of lectics, we are now keen on forgetting about this, keen on History, Princeton University Press, remaining oblivious about Hegel’s influence on the genealogy Princeton, 1997. of our minds. Francis Fukuyama saw in the end of dialect- ical, hence historical, tensions between liberalism and communism a sign of the end of history, understood as a contradiction in itself. In the same way, Arthur Danto is famed for stating that, in the context of a capitalistic society the work of art, as it was created by Andy Warhol, could not have the same sacredness as before, and therefore did not assume the very nature of what was once art. Both “ends” come from Hegel’s analysis, as developed in his post- humously published Lectures on Aesthetics (1835) and Lectures on the Philosophy of History (1837). Raising the issue of “the end of money” provides a perfect occasion to re-think Hegel’s legacy insofar as the expression in itself manifests a Hegelian conception of his- tory, reflecting the idea that history has a beginning and an end. It should be noted as well that this finitude appears to be, not really an ideal, but perhaps more of a possibility. In other words, the end of money could be purely a utopian projection, but it might also be a very practical reality – one that we experience, even unknowingly, even though it may have changed our world and the perception we have of it. Indeed, money appears to be more and more immaterial and fictional, less and less actual. Money isn’t money anymore. It isn’t the solid, heavy stuff it once was. In a way, it has become a concept, the reality of which we believe. But we could choose to stop living in a delusional state. We could refuse to keep using money, referring to it even. A proper response to the current events would be for us to say “we don’t want money anymore. We want something else,” whatever that may be, which raises a to- tally different question: What could we want instead of money? Trade, Ideals, Freedom, Nothing, Nothingness? The very idea of the “end of money,” although now not totally unlikely, seems incredibly problematic. It is apparently purely formal, even formalistic, but it relates to the deeper questions of contemporary life. So maybe they should be dealt with seriously. As Plato said in the

The End of Coins, the Triumph of Money, 44 45 and the Disruptive Revolution of Art Theaetetus, soma sema, the “body” (soma) is at the same money expresses the value of art. Money defines art. And time a “tomb” and a “sign” (sema). As a concept, the “end art is worth money. Such simple statements actually reflect of money” obviously enjoys both characteristics of sema. fundamental issues. Should the value of art be necessarily As a consequence, it would appear relevant to conceive of related to physical, material trade tools, such as coins? And money in the following terms: on the one hand, as a token what does it actually mean that coins, the instrument of of finitude, which is expressed through its semantics; and monetary trade, were the very first object to be part of the on the other hand, as a signal, something that would convey Duchampian revolution of the conception of the artwork? a certain meaning and indicate a proper direction. Our It isn’t by chance that Duchamp’s last ready-made was take on it should integrate these two aspects, as if we were actually a set of coins, first minted in 1964, under the title handling a fiction, with the awareness that it is a fiction, Drain Stopper, which was changed in 1967 for Marcel which we nonetheless want to handle. The “end of money” Duchamp Art Medal. Indeed, the artist-programmer of the thus appears as a provocative, yet ambiguous concept, 20th century was deeply aware of the discrepancy between that is knowingly conceived as fictional, although it is in- the age of Ancient art, in which coins mattered, and the credibly helpful in defining what our vision of the world new age, in which they were turned into useless “medals.” should be, and then, actually is. Such a theme therefore All this gives us more signs than we would actually bears in itself some elements of the Platonic muthos, in the need to assert that the birth of money in the form of coins sense that Socrates could tell his followers and his op- had to do with the sanctity of the artwork. Money, at its ponent Callicles, in the Gorgias: “Do pay attention to a very very beginning, had a sense of sacredness, as is evidenced beautiful tale, that you will perhaps consider to be just a by the fact that the Latin word moneta (which means “the tale, but that I see as a reasonable discourse.” That is what warner”) comes from the epiclesis of the goddess Juno. And the “end of money” is all about: a “tale” that is at the same the place where the mind was located was situated near time a “reasonable discourse,” depending on who proclaims the temple of that divinity, in Rome. In somewhat parallel it, and on whose face it is proclaimed. fashion, the Greek word nomisma finds its roots in nomos, In the context of an art center, the “end of money” the “law,” a word which has of course deep religious impli- could easily be taken as a parallel to Hegel’s “death of art,” cations, for instance in Sophocles’ Antigone. Indeed, in this according to which art lives past the end of its sanctity and tragedy from the 5th century B.C., Oedipus’ daughter, its religiousness. Art appears as an essential phenomenon Antigone, has to choose between the human and the divine of history, and, as such, it mirrors the mutations of historical law, what she calls “the unwritten laws,” (nomima agrapta processes, entering a post-religious phase, which is funda- in Ancient Greek). As money was sacred, it was also per- mentally post-artistic as well. Post-art mirrors post-history. ceived as an art form of some kind; the best example of this It would hence be evident that art could not survive an era being Syracuse in the late 5th century B.C., where en- of trade and non-sacred thinking. In a way, maybe the death gravers such as Eukleidas, Kimon or Evainetos were allowed of art should be related to the development of money: to sign the coins they designed. It clearly indicated that indeed, currencies have played a key role in “disenchanting they were seen as having a potential artistic content. the world,” to recall Max Weber’s “die Entzauberung der The decadrachms, most importantly, have been presented Welt.” Since it has made the relations and the psychological as the first medals in history: with a value of ten times the horizon commercial, money has replaced sanctity – a regular drachm, they may have had more than trade value, statement that is, as it seems, a true commonplace of con- having also been a gift from the powers that be to certain temporary thinking. prominent or outstanding individuals. Numismatics represent Money, and not coinage, for the gap between those the point of connection between art and money. But the two words is immense. As Walter Benjamin famously pointed increasing importance taken by money has overshadowed out in The Artwork at the Age of its Technical Reproduc- the monetary object in itself. When you need more and ibility, coins were the first artworks that could be massively more money, you can no longer really consider the singular and pre-industrially reproduced. Indeed, they were at the coin as an artwork, and focus on it in the exact same very core of a tension between mass-production and rarity; measure as you used to. If the monetary object in itself is art and money; sacredness and pragmatism. As such, they not artistic anymore, or at least is no longer considered to represent the very proof that a strange alchemy is under be so, it must have an impact on the perception we have way in the interaction between these two entities, some sort of it, and at the same time on the idea we have created for of strange magic: if one follows the rules of the market, art, and for money.

The End of Coins, the Triumph of Money, 46 Donatien Grau 47 and the Disruptive Revolution of Art The evolution of money has had an impact on the very over the fact that money is no longer a physical reality – survival of artistic procedures, and has been considered as what about art? a serious threat to creation and its ontology – or to say it Hence, it appears that, if money has “murdered” otherwise: its mysticism. Coins originated in art. And for art, then one should wonder whether the end of money, its a long time, in particular in the form of medals, they finitude, its “death,” to use Hegel’s word, would likely con- existed in an ongoing dialogue with art. They were ma- sist of a rebirth of art, a renaissance. The end of money terial, in the same way as the artwork – be it a sculpture or would represent the limit for an age that has relied on it to a painting – was material. For instance, an artist such as finance and then annihilate the sacredness of creativity. Pisanello (c. 1395 – c. 1455) was at the same time a medal It would actually symmetrically reverse the whole process: engraver and, of course, a painter. But now coins tend money slowly circumscribes art, hence diminishes it, to disappear, to become a relic from an object-related past. and finally destroys it, whereas a rebirth of art would not And money has become more and more of a new con- have this processual dimension. It would be an “event,” in temporary authority, following an inverse movement to Alain Badiou’s sense of the word, which would create a the evolution of coins, that could be summarized in the void, that could, or could not, be filled by art and by what duality between face value and the pure concept of money, George Steiner once called the “grammars of creation,” the fiction, the muthos, in which we deeply believe. For a according to the idea that all forms of production are part long time, art has dealt with the representation of coins: of the same entity, which is art, and that they follow painters such as Hans Memling, Titian, or Lorenzo Lotto different languages. But how could grammar be shaped figured coins in their works. The problem now is that artists again, after such a disruptive revolution? How could art have to find ways to stage money’s dematerialization, and, find rules after the materiality in its system of values has maybe, its material end. During the Renaissance, coins been questioned? were part of the collectible goods that every aristocrat was That would be the science-fictional problem of art, required to own, in order to show his culture and his which could be addressed with the very nature of artistic position in society. As a consequence, it was normal to production: alchemy, and what Kader Attia once called picture them in portraits, because they were part of the the “artists’s philosopher’s stone.” In such a crisis inside of representation of people as characters. Now, not only the system of values, inside of the construction and the numismatic collections are incredibly old-fashioned, but definition of art, a lot seems to be possible, and the art- also coins themselves are not very useful anymore. Artists world appears as the “safe haven” of every contemporary have the duty to find ways to deal with that issue, that practice. And why not? But the end of coins, the end of a coins do not matter anymore – banks, wire transfers are materiality inside trade, mimics the end of a need for materi- the real thing. Money is something you cannot feel – or, ality in art. It expresses the limits of the object – be it a as the Emperor Vespasian once stated: “it doesn’t smell.” coin or an actual painting. In the end, after this double He was not talking about wire transfers, but, two thousand “disruptive revolution,” the only question that should be years ago, he could not have found a more proper way to raised remains: Is it worth it? express today’s situation. Money in itself appears to be a story, a symbol, which you can believe in or not. Of course, we are conditioned to believe in it, and to use it, and to live in a monetarized eco- nomy. However, it would be difficult to doubt the fact that, according to an Hegelian perspective, the time of coins and the time of art were simultaneous, and as a consequence, the end of art comes with the end of coins, and, actually, the triumph of money. Indeed, art was material, it was a presence of transcendence. Coins were a material presence as well, and a sign inside of a system of values, with enough balance between materiality and symbolism. Money is no longer material. It goes from one computer to another and, sometimes, but only sometimes, you can use it to buy some element of the ancient system of materiality – such as a gold ingot, if really necessary. But – if there is little debate

The End of Coins, the Triumph of Money, 48 Donatien Grau 49 and the Disruptive Revolution of Art 50 Lili Reynaud-Dewar 51 52 Lili Reynaud-Dewar 53 54 Lili Reynaud-Dewar 55 56 Tonel 57 The End Always Comes Twice There are languages in which money is a word that is always used in the plural: dengi in Russian; pari in Bulgarian; Dessislava Dimova peniaze in Slovak; bani in Romanian. It would thus seem that it was former communist societies that better under- stood the logic of capitalism. For capitalism’s defining quality is its plurality – the pluralization of money, which (when sufficiently multiplied) itself becomes capital. Drawing on this principle of multiplication, I would like to suggest that, unlike the radical view of “the” end as rupture in the utopia of modernism, the end that one can hope for in contemporary capitalism is not a singular event. Therefore the end of money too has to be treated in the plural (the ends of money). For while the media re-produce an abundance of crises, (aestheticizing these as ends) true ends have become almost impossible to identify. In light of this, I will propose that some ends of money might have already happened, albeit unnoticed – for instance, the end of money as a means for acquiring free time.

After creation comes re-creation 1 1 Chapter title in Vladislav Todorv, Free time is always defined by its other – the time of work. Red Square, Black Square, Albany: From the perspective of work, free time can be seen both SUNY Press, 1995, p. 97. as a means and as an end. As a means, free time is seen exclusively as the time required for the regeneration of the capacity for work; it is the time of leisure. As an end, free time is time freed of necessity and work, and is thus the basic purpose of life. It is in this latter sense that the notion of free time promises something beyond simply leisure, and possibly closer to the notion of freedom. Thinking work and free time in opposition is not a modern invention. Only the choice of one as the measure of the other has shifted. In Antiquity, for instance, work was perceived as constitutive of the noble vocations of life, such as contemplation and philosophy. Work was defined through free time, as that time which was un-free, enslaved by necessity. This is attested to in both the Latin and the Ancient Greek languages, in which working or doing business literally translates as “not-leisure” – ascholia (work) was, in Greek, the opposite of schole (leisure), just as in Latin negotium (work) was the opposite of otium (leisure). In industrial and post-industrial societies free time is a notion firmly rooted in an ideology of work. Work as an activity measured, valued, and paid for in time, becomes the measure of all activity. Free time is then a kind of surplus, one of the many leftovers of industrial production that needs to be accordingly managed and made profitable. The question of free time has further philosophical bearings, as it is ultimately a question of what kind of activity constitutes work and what kind of activity (or non-activity)

58 59 The End Always Comes Twice constitutes free time.2 Or to formulate it differently: What 2 utopia to its theological conclusion, where man’s constant is the relationship between free time and productivity on Throughout the text I have avoided the striving for a state of full development and freedom culmin- distinction between “labor” and “work” the one hand, and free time and leisure on the other? which would adhere to a separation ates in a motionless state of divine perfection, a “white In his 1920 essay Laziness: The Real Truth of between the notion of heavy material thought.” Mankind, Kasimir Malevich reveals the confusion between “labor” and that of creative and The Russian avant-garde had a complicated relation- immaterial labor implied in the term the two notions of free time – as a means and as an end – “work.” Rather both terms are used ship to the time outside of work. With the possibility of a and proposes a philosophical account of idleness.3 In line interchangeably, in the more general growing amount of free time that machines were supposed with the ancient Greeks, Malevich sees the truth of life as a sense of a productive and remuner- to offer, concerns of how such time could be spent per- ated activity fully inscribed in society. state of pure inactivity and contemplation. He suggests that turbed even the most radical thinkers. The logic of pro- free time is not a surplus derived from labor but the basis 3 duction inevitably invaded free time and turned it into a of human existence. Every human being naturally strives From the French edition, Kazimir surplus that had to be carefully folded back into the ideology Malevich, La Paresse comme vérité towards idleness and freedom from the burden of labor. effective de l’homme, Paris: Editions of production. Melnikov’s famous project for a Laboratory Labor has been falsely valorized, both in capitalism and in Allia, 2007. of Sleep (1929), for example, proposed to accommodate socialism. Such obsession with work and productivity workers collectively and to provide them with the best obscures the true virtue of man – and the true meaning of possible conditions for sleep and physical recuperation such life – which is not simply leisure but laziness.4 The purpose 4 as centrally regulated temperature and humidity, calming of any work activity is no other than to produce the con- In the original Russian version, sounds, slightly rocking beds.9 Another architect’s project – 9 Malevich uses the word “лень” (len), ditions for time that is free of labor and full of all the Nikolay Kuzmin’s miners’ commune (1929) – proposed a S. Frederick Starr, Melnikov: Solo which means laziness and inactivity, Architect in a Mass Society, Princeton: enjoyments associated with this freedom. “Money,” Malevich not unlike the way they were im- perfectly calculated timing for every single activity outside Princeton University Press, 1978. then goes on to say, “is nothing else but a little piece of personated in Goncharov’s character of work, from sleeping, eating and washing, to the time Oblomov, in the 1859 novel which took 5 laziness.” Thus in capitalist society the working class is the the title character’s name. that it takes to walk from the dormitory to the bathroom, mass force producing the conditions for the leisurely life or the minutes one requires to get dressed.10 In his minutely 10 of the few. Labor is paid time, which ensures those who work 5 timed project, a total of four hours was dedicated to recre- Anatole Kopp, Town and Revolution, La Paresse, p. 15. New York: Georg Braziller, 1970, can buy free time; and in capitalism free time is accumu- ation. Although he suggested this time be filled with sports pp. 152 – 54 (quoted in Vladislav lated like any other surplus. In socialism, by contrast, 6 or culture, Kuzmin nevertheless left these as the only Todorv, Red Square, Black Square, money should play no role. Both work, and the resulting Platonov’s The Foundation Pit (1930) unspecified time, insisting that: “Here it is life itself that Albany: SUNY Press, 1995, pp. 97 – 98). describes precisely this obsession 11 free time, should be equally distributed among the workers. with work as an end in itself that will determine how time is spent…” We can also consider 11 Thanks to technology, heavy work can be taken over by became characteristic of the early the popular “workers clubs” (in the late 1920s Melnikov Todorv, p. 97. machines and free time can become more and more available soviet society and later developed into famously designed several of them), which were meant to the theatrically performed rituals of to the point of completely eliminating the time necessary labour in late socialism. The workers provide the physical and conceptual framework for spending for labor, at least for humans. Malevich’s surprising anti- in the novel dig a pit without knowing the workers’ free time efficiently for the full development productivist concept daringly criticizes socialist society for for what it serves, but the process, of their personality. falling into the trap of endless productivity and forgetting the endless work is what is important. Under capitalism, free time has also been submitted There is no space for questioning and 6 the real purpose of labor – the end of labor itself. contemplation, happiness is within to well-defined – albeit apparently less strict – forms of These ideas testify to Malevich’s own mystical work itself. organization. Here we can take Adorno’s account of the inclinations and should be seen in relation to his theory of collapsing of free time into its opposite via the limited but 7 non-objectivity, where Man as well as art (as his creative Malevich develops these thoughts in perfectly socially-integrated enjoyments proposed by the expression) attain a state of divine perfection in pure God is not Cast Down (1922). leisure industry.12 For Adorno, free time in capitalist society 12 thought.7 Even activities that are not labor per-se but are is “nothing more but a shadowy continuation of labor,” a Theodor Adorno, “Free Time,” in 8 T. Adorno, The Culture Industry, rather focused on crafting the perfection of Man – like the God himself had to work, Malevich pro- notion that goes beyond the sense of such time serving the London; New York: Routledge, 1991. sciences and art – ultimately end in a divine state of in- poses, not a heavy physical work, recuperation of working power.13 Free time collapses into activity and contemplation. Malevich seemed to hesitate but the creative type of work – simply leisure, but this is not the leisure envisaged by the likes of 13 imagining and pronouncing words, Adorno, p. 194. on the question of art, as this is activity not born out of not unlike an artist. Once his work has Aristotle or Malevich. Besides its recuperative function, free necessity, and thus not exactly labor. On the contrary, art achieved perfection he could do time under capitalism is defined by a compulsion of society is an activity that contributes to the development of nothing more but eternally contem- towards productivity, work, and accumulation that makes plate the wisdom of his accomplish- mankind, and as such is a stage in the achievement of pure ment. La Paresse, p. 29. free time an annex to labor, but also an empty moment that idleness. The general tendency of Malevich’s economy of must be filled with appropriate leisure activities. These nature is not entropy or more activity but stillness. Eventu- activities must not be severed from the logic of the economy ally, once perfected, even creative efforts should lead to that engenders free time in the first place. For they are, in pure contemplation.8 Thus Malevich takes the communist fact, the activities where all the money accumulated through

60 Dessislava Dimova 61 The End Always Comes Twice labor is to be spent, folding consumption into the cycle of transformed both work and its other (free time) into a kind production. We can shudder with Adorno, who possessed a of “white noise.”17 17 particular talent for identifying the hopelessness of life, as The critics of early industrialization were fighting to Don Delillo, White Noise, London: Picador, 2011. we recognize the hobbies, tourist packages and sun-tanning transform the production process so as to include the rituals, which defined the leisure industry in the late worker in the consumption end of the industrial cycle, thus 1960s, persisting to this day. For Adorno, free time – as allowing for more people to consume the ever-expanding defined by the leisure industry – becomes the very symbol production of industrial societies. In The Right To Be Lazy of unfreedom. (1883), Paul Lafarge suggests that capitalists should allow These thoughts are echoed in Clement Greenberg’s workers to access some of the goods they have produced, essay “The Plight of Culture” (1953), where the critic and even let them take loans so as to be able consume argues that the logic of industrial (and post-industrial) pro- more.18 Today these rights have not only been secured, but 18 duction dictates the status of leisure on almost every level. there is also an opposite tendency: All consumers, even “Put at the disposal of your working girls the fortune they have built up With mass production comes mass entertainment, and the most privileged ones, are included in the production for you out of their flesh; you want to everything else follows, en masse. The classes educated for process so that everybody participates in the perpetuation help business, get your goods into leisure and appreciation of the arts and sciences start to of a new kind of consumptive labor, branded as leisurely circulation, – here are consumers ready at hand. Give them unlimited disappear. Even for the privileged, free time begins to be activity. Today, freedom from work has reached a point of credit.” Paul Lafargue, The Right To Be filled with the leisurely pleasures of the lower classes undifferentiation from endless productivity: Creative labor, Lazy, http://www.marxists.org/ (cinema and popular music) and resembles less and less with its flexible working hours, is exemplified in the archive/lafargue/1883/lazy/ch02.htm. the truly idle existence that can be devoted to the arts and “creative industries” of today wherein art is both a model to philosophy.14 Even the rich have to work today, notes 14 and a part. With this lack of differentiation between work- Greenberg, as professional accomplishment has become Clement Greenberg, “L’état de la cul- time and free time, money – which was once exchanged for ture,” in Art et Culture, Paris: Editions the most valued quality. This inevitably changes the Macula, 1988. (I am working with work time to become the promise of leisure – now seems situation of the arts, which traditionally have been related the French translation of “The Plight of to bring the possibility of a more complete involvement in to the support and the connoisseurship of the leisure Culture.” the process of producing value. “White noise” becomes the classes. Following on these thoughts, a few decades later, 15 space of a total undifferentiated involvement in this process Boris Groys suggests that the art world, and artists Boris Groys, “Art and Money,” in e-flux of production as circulation as consumption. themselves, have become their own elite, the only “class” journal #24 (http://www.e-flux.com/ The Russian avant-garde dreamt of objects that would journal/view/226) Returning to the able to fully appreciate art as a true form of leisure outside question of money, the concept of be, not simple commodities (consumable and disposable), of the mass notions of leisure.15 Yet, turning the producers artists as constituting their own elite but counter-subjects or comrades whose role would be to into their own public, art then performs the ultimate audience does not quite answer the accompany the worker in the process of his transformation problem of who is actually paying for fusion of production and consumption, already present in the avant-garde (Groys distinguishes into a new human. Equally, the artwork had to lose its role the structural bind of work and leisure. Greenberg already it from the more spectacular and as an ornamental, opaque object and become a transparent sensed this shift by hesitantly proposing the possibility of popular products of contemporary art thing, mimetic of the process of production. As material 16 in general). If connoisseurship and placing art straight in the middle of work. financial support have shifted apart things were seen to tie the new human down to the world irreparably – one remaining a sort of of old values, this new concept of the artwork required a avant-garde elitism and the other a new type of object. Ironically, these dreams have come true White Noise form of “life-style” (the elitism of the today, not only within the reality of art but above all in the masses) – what (financial) possibilities Technically “white noise” is a saturation of different fre- remain for avant-garde art? I assume allure of commodities that require engagement and quencies in which every sound has acquired the same value Groys implies the need for public and participation in an already hyper-productive environment. and none of the individual elements can be distinguished state support, but the problem is worth This allure is no longer purely aesthetic, as further examination. anymore. But this state of non-differentiation finds a more aesthetic enjoyment implies disengagement and disinterest metaphorical claim in Don DeLillo’s novel White Noise 16 and is more akin to unproductive leisure. Nor is it about (1985), where the fear of death organizes daily life as a con- Ibid. Groys quotes the English version provoking and satisfying desire, as enjoyment is now a of “The Plight of Culture”: “The only stant effort to escape or forget the end (which is no longer solution for culture that I conceive of means – a way of working – rather than an end in itself. In distinguishable from the phobia against it). Thus white under these conditions is to shift its fact the commodity is not about consuming anymore, as noise becomes a metaphor for a society where the end is center of gravity away from leisure consumption itself has become a kind of work. Commodity and place it squarely in the middle of always lingering but is never quite allowed to happen. work.” aesthetics – the pure allure and promise of the commodity The immobile state of contemplation (or “white beyond its immediate use – has been replaced by an thought”) dreamt by Malevich has morphed today into its ethics of consumption according to which one does not opposite – a permanent, self-generating activity that has simply consume things; one participates in global systems

62 Dessislava Dimova 63 The End Always Comes Twice of economic and ecological distribution. One eats fair-trade not simply the general inequality of the system, but the chocolate (and in doing so contributes to a more just historical and geographical imbalances within the relation distribution of wealth), washes and cleans with “bio” of the production, exchange and consumption. (The detergent and soap (thus helping to offset the impact of impoverished Congolese worker has to “catch-up” to the living on the environment) and wears lipstick (contributing absolute equivalence of these previously differentiated to cancer research).19 19 processes within the capitalist cycle). It also reveals how Renzo Martens’ famously controversial film Enjoy One of the characters in White Noise, the changing configuration eventually destabilizes the makes the following remark in regards Poverty (2009) offers a commentary, albeit an indirect to the fictional supermarket “generic possibility of art to act as a critical agent, and how critical one, on certain historical and geographical aspects of this food”, in white, unappealing, no brand reflexes need to be re-evaluated with the shift of historical development from commodity aesthetics to an ethics of package: “This is the new austerity. and geographical contexts. Finally, Martens’ experiment Flavorless packaging. It appeals to me. consumption. The film shows the artist on a quest to teach I feel I’m not only saving money but proves that, for the moment, the white noise economy locals in Upper Congo to profit from the global demand for contributing to some kind of spiritual remains predominantly, and not surprisingly, well, white. images of African poverty by becoming photographers of consensus. It’s like World War III. Everything is white. They’ll take our their own condition, taking this role from the hands of bright colours away and use them in What’s art got to do with it? foreign photographers and selling the image of their own the war effort.” In: Don Delillo, White suffering to the West. The scandalous and depressing ele- Noise, London: Picador, 2011, p. 22. In the white noise produced by the Western system as a ment of Martens’ project is precisely the schema it pro- form of all encompassing “creative” activity (a type of work poses, which amounts to re-inserting those who were at the that equals its opposite, leisure), it is art that best repre- margins, living in exclusion (and on the verge of survival) sents the capitalist ideal of this voluntary and inventive back into the world of capitalist exchange, suggesting that work. In the economy of white noise, art epitomizes a for the locals the possibility of emancipation can only be concept of capitalized free time where leisure expands into envisaged within the bounds of capitalism itself. Hence, an artistic and ultimately productive activity. Martens’ system proposes replacing an ethically unacceptable Already in 1907, Georg Simmel was pointing out form of capitalist exploitation with a form of inclusion for that the level of abstraction that money had introduced the exploited as producers of the new ethical commodities. into society was leading to an unprecedented importance of But this inclusion is a paradoxical one: The African workers intellectual work, of ideas and activities not directly in the film can enter the system of exchange only by remain- engaged in economy.20 And indeed today we cannot see 20 ing poor, by trading not labor but poverty itself. intellectual labor as something separate from the economy. Georg Simmel, The Philosophy of Money, London; New York: Routledge, Certainly the locals do not see themselves as new In all this, we must consider the fact that creativity and 1990, p. 152. creative entrepreneurs. Like the early industrial workers in access to high culture and advanced thought have also the West, they simply want better wages and better living become part of the lives of more and more people today conditions for their families. In a way Martens seems to – particularly those who traditionally had no access to suggest that the figure of the worker exploited for his own intellectual work, either as producers, or as consumers. sweat and blood, a figure that has almost disappeared in In the era of white noise, everybody and everything the West, is eventually going to evolve in Africa too. Still becomes a producer simply by existing, by virtue of being the transformation the artist tries to impose is hardly his switched on to the Internet, or to the world in general. own invention. In Brazil, favela tourism has been for years The artwork is probably the best representative of the white a similarly controversial example, and has expanded today noise economy as it generates value not according to the to other locations. Local children in Delhi can now also labor time invested in it, or via its exchange, or via the earn a living (and ultimately even manage to leave the promise of happiness it offers. The artwork generates value slums) by serving as tour guides, precisely by selling the simply by being plugged into the system of the art world. sight of their own shantytowns to tourists. That this The art world is curiously Janus-faced in that it is business is run by local foundations surely contributes to both the example and the exception to the world at large. the tourists’ enjoyment – the good feeling that, rather than Paradoxically, only by reflecting the conditions of the white paying for a service, they are engaging in charity. noise economy, can it insist on some separation between If Martens’ film is symptomatic, it is so not only the general white noise creativity and what is specifically because it refuses the ethical differentiation of good / bad, art. Eventually, by thinking of itself as work, art is capable victim / perpetrator that the viewer expects. Rather, the film of opening up a space to reflect upon what free time as a operates within the gaps that open between different distinctively “free” condition could be. historical and geographical structures of capitalism. It reveals

64 Dessislava Dimova 65 The End Always Comes Twice Art and free time express a form of excess, a surplus. And guarantees the relative stability of the art system, on an- in capitalism, all surplus must be recycled and rendered other level, art’s vitality is guaranteed by the masses of profitable. A lot of the efforts to counter the existing equation people engaged with it in one way or another, representing of art and leisure as activities outside of work have over- the shadowy economy and the true working force behind looked the reality of the white noise economy. Thus, the the art world. These are the two essential elements defining effort to position the role of art as something outside of the the terms of art’s engagement with leisure and work. At all-encompassing productive circuit – as a model for true the center is the artist, or the artwork – these singular and idleness – has largely failed. Few people today probably privileged manifestations of both freedom (Adorno) and remember the 6th Caribean Biennial (2000) organized by idleness (Malevich). Behind them (or rather within them) Maurizio Cattelan and Jens Hoffman, which presented no is hidden the whole system that integrates the unfreedom art but simply provided a vacation for the organizing of both the leisure industry and the underpaid labor that curators and invited artists, with no obligation towards the creates the buzzing activity in the world of art. public.21 The project echoed older works by Cattelan like 21 How to get a museum-paid vacation (1995) and one On the biennial see for instance Jenny Liu, “Trouble in Paradise”, Frieze maga- imagines that it was intended as a critique of the business zine #51 (http://www.frieze.com/ of producing art and the spreading of biennial tourism. The issue/article/trouble_in_paradise/). major failure of the concept, however, lay in its avoidance of any elaboration on what art as free, non-productive time, could mean. The problem did not lie in the deliberate arrogance of “let’s use all the money poured into the spec- tacle of art to produce nothing.” The problem was rooted in the fact that the biennial did nothing more than reinforce the empty notion of free time as tourism and far niente; it thus presented art within a space still clearly differentiated between labor and leisure. There exist more complex attempts to align art, leisure and work, but these have rarely done more than underline the radical separation between the world of work and the world of art. Nowhere is this more apparent than when the worker actually figures in artworks as living and breathing “material.” The fascination with the figure of the worker seems more like nostalgia for a historical situation that obliterates the artist’s contemporary position in the sphere of work. In this respect, Santiago Sierra’s controver- sial use of foreign workers comes to mind. Besides the moral issues associated with the restaging of the conditions of migrant labor inside the art exhibition, which involve the artist and the public in the act of exploitation, Sierra’s work seems to suggest that the art world, as a site of some- what perverse, socially-conscious spectacle, is radically separated from the sphere of work. For Malevich and Adorno art, as intellectual work, ended the distinction between labor and leisure. The white noise economy has certainly taken an ironic revenge on this claim. Today art is more or less fully integrated into the culture industry, as the sheer amounts of visitors, exhib- itions, events, and money invested in art attest. Art represents the poster image of the kind of work promoted by the white noise economy that does not separate itself from free time. While, on one level, art as a mass spectacle

66 Dessislava Dimova 67 The End Always Comes Twice 68 Tonel 69 A p p e n d i x

70 71 Floorplan Witte de With The End of Money 22.5.–7.8.2011

2nd floor Group Exhibition [7] [6] [ 0 ] National Geographic Magazine [ 1 ] Zachary Formwalt [ 2 ] Christodoulos Panayiotou [8] [15] [ 3 ] Tonel [ 4 ] Hadley+Maxwell [ 5 ] Peter Fischli & David Weiss [12] [ 6 ] Vangelis Vlahos [ 7 ] Tomás Saraceno [0] [1] [ 8 ] Matts Leiderstam

[3] [1] [ 9 ] Lili Reynaud-Dewar

 [ 10 ] Maha Maamoun   [ 11 ] Agnieszka Kurant [ 12 ] Toril Johannessen [ 13 ] Pierre Bismuth [1] [2]  [13] [10] [ 14 ] Alexander Apóstol [ 15 ] Goldin+Senneby [ 16 ] Vishal Jugdeo [ 17 ] Lawrence Weiner

3rd floor

[11] [3] [4]

[3] [6]

[6]

[12]

  [17] 

[5] [16]  [9]

[14]

72 The End of Money 73 Exhibition Floorplan Exhibition Guide come to a standstill (presumably figurations of the social which a starting point for an historical because oil has become un- are presumably suppressed by exploration of how the changes affordable). Important for this the continued existence of in value of postage stamps at Introduction exhibition is the fact that these money. different points in time affected two magazines construct an their design, ultimately arriving The End of Moneyis a group ex- eternal return of the same (to We have two speculative pos- at two (the Weimar Republic hibition about time and value: use a Nietzschean phrase), itions within the idea of “the end in Germany, and the U.S. just about time determining value and in exact cycles (precisely of money.” In one of these – the before and during the Great and value determining our thirty years, to the day). The apocalyptic position – the end Depression) periods when they relationship to time. As the title fear of eternal recurrence – the of money would bring about the were overprinted with symbols suggests, this examination is gloomy thought that things will end of progress and throw and numbers. A second con- oriented towards the phenom- have to be endured over and humanity “back” into a cyclical tribution by Formwalt relates to enon of money, as explored over again – is the emotion that time. In the other – the utopian his larger interest in places of through the idea, or even utopia, keeps societies focused on position – the abolition of capital that capitalism itself has of a post-monetary economy. ideas of progress and develop- money would allow for new and made non-essential. This work The title is thus meant to ment, the quintessential con- perhaps better social bonds is composed of a series of suggest a “horizon” beyond cepts of modernity. In the and other relationships to the photographs whose common which the present material con- discourse of the Enlightenment, world to arise. But there subject is Karl Marx, his famous ditions of existence might be these two concepts (progress remains a practical side to the book Capital and an un- unsettled. What would become and development) were human- problem that this exhibition published manuscript. In one of of our relationship to things, ity’s way out of cyclical time. aims to explore. In an empirical these pictures one sees a hand to the earth, and especially to But progress and development sense, money is the economy holding a loupe to a photograph others? Should money be as conceived today need made tangible; it is the thing in taken after Henry Fox Talbot’s factored out of reality and, more money and energy, and the end which the economy is object- 1845 calotype of the Royal importantly, out of the collect- of either of these (of oil or cur- ively experienced. This factual Exchange, magnifying a statue ive memory? rency) seems, from such a point or factualizing aspect of money that occupies the center of the of view, apocalyptic. Therefore, is most noticeable in econ- frieze inserted in the tympanum. In the exhibition the visitor will these two magazines are here omies that remain in touch with As it turns out, this allegorical find two issues ofNational as evidence that even capital- currency: in places where bank- frieze was meant to be repre- [ 0 ] Geographic Magazine. One is ism, and a seemingly secular notes and coins are the princi- sentative of Empire, exemplified from June, 1974; the other one culture, cannot escape theo- pal mediators of exchange, and by the different “subjects” from June, 2004. That these logical motifs such as the end in which, as a consequence, represented (East Indians, Turks, two issues are exactly thirty of time and eternal recurrence. currency circulates quite visibly Arabs, and so on), and brought years apart could be taken as and in large quantities. This is home by an inscription that a gag, for both magazines an- Another “end” of money is also the case for most of the world. reads “The earth is the Lord’s nounce the same grim future: on the horizon here: one in For most of the world money and the fullness thereof.” An “Oil, the Dwindling Treasure,” which money has been effect- constitutes a real problem, image of the same building was (June, 1974) and then, thirty ively removed from reality. Such either because it is extremely used on the cover of a Penguin years later, “Think gas is expen- a gesture has been proposed rare (poverty) or overabundant edition of the second volume of sive now? Just wait. You’ve many times in modern history, but devalued (inflation). At the Karl Marx’s Capital, in which heard it before, but this time it’s and is often associated with level of everyday life, money this statue and the inscription for real: we’re at the beginning idealized “returns”: such as the remains the form through which beneath it have been obscured of the end of cheap Oil” (June, return to nature, the return to the political economy can be by the design (whether this 2004). If one wants to know a barter economy, and so on. felt, and it comes endowed with is for ideological reasons shall what will happen thirty years The argument against money larger social, political and eco- remain as an open question). from now all one has to do is go is founded on the idea that it nomic phenomena. A third photograph shows the back to the 1974 issue, where is exclusively the vehicle of back of the 1845 contract for a chart inserted on top of an capitalism, and that as long as the publication of Marx’s aerial view of the Rotterdam money remains the principal A r t i s t s Critique of Politics and National port lays it out in oracular form of economic exchange, Economy, which he put aside fashion. This chart, with its capitalism will continue to The informalization of currency for some twenty years when it projection that oil will be gone totalize life with its own system under extreme economic con- emerged, transformed into Das by 2050, can be seen on the of value. The utopian expect- [ 1 ] ditions is the subject of Zachary Kapital. walls of Witte de With, and next ation of this logic – the abolition Formwalt’s At Face Value. In to it the apocalyptic image of of money – is to release other this video the artist takes his [ 2 ] Christodoulos Panayiotou’s a highway on which cars have forms of value and other con- father’s philatelic collection as 2008 (2008) is a pile of shredded

74 The End of Money 75 Exhibition Guide banknotes that contains all the sort of naïve draftsman would were painted on walls in the the visible world: National pounds that the Cypriot Central envision such an image? At first villas of Antiquity, and one in Geographic Magazine, in par- Bank recollected during its glance, absurdist scenarios particular of a room in the ticular, comes to mind, with its shift to the Euro, marking the such as this one might seem Roman Emperor Nero’s famous carefully controlled aesthetic, country’s (geographically innocently disconnected from Villa Aurea. In these frescoes through which authorship is, as counter-intuitive) entry into the the actual nature of the con- of Roman Antiquity (which it were, surgically removed – or, economic policies of the Euro- temporary economic imagina- incidentally are assumed to if not removed, then replaced, pean Union. Clearly this is the tion, its limits and promises. constitute the origin of the so that National Geographic most literal representation of Coupled with the drawing’s grotesque) random collections becomes the ventriloquist of an an “end of money” that this naïve aesthetic, the whimsical of objects and fauna were army of photographers whose exhibition contains. Neverthe- ideas that it represents seem in placed within an architectural role is, in the end, to present less, this work belongs to an need of a clearer understand- design that receded into the the visible world as a field of aspect of Panayiotou’s practice ing of the technological, poli- background, giving the illusion equalized values. But Sichtbare that is concerned with perform- tical, and financial limits that of unlimited depth, so that the Welt at once appropriates and ing an archaeology of modern it so irreverently disregards. viewer (the Emperor, ideally) works against this homogeniz- Cyprus. This work is less about Nevertheless, in a not-so- could feel immersed in imagined ing code. Rather than attempt- an “end” of the pound, and distant past, between the 17th realities. Thus, this scaffold ing to ground the images in more about a narrative of tran- and 19th centuries, and even seems allegorical of a desire for specific geopolitical realities, sitions (Cyprus’ entrance into into the 20th, similar combina- unlimited expansion associated as National Geographic does, the Euro Zone) and replace- tions of individual fancy and with Empire. On the scaffold Fischli and Weiss’ work leaves ments (the euro replacing the economic ingenuity were quite that Hadley+Maxwell have the image radically uncatego- pound) in which each denomin- common. Here one might think devised rest a series of objects, rized, suggesting perhaps that ation constitutes a formaliza- of the city-machines and city- mostly hand-carved in wood, the visible world is a world that tion of an entire system of factories designed by the that the artists have altered, exists exclusively in the space value (the pound is to an earliest rationalists of land mainly by amputation. To these of representation, without a Imperial system what the euro economy, the Physiocrats, and remaining objects the artists real counterpart. In this sense, is to a neo-liberal economic of the many subsequent have given the name of “im- this work functions in oppos- expansionism). Through this entrepreneurial schemes for properties.” These objects now ition to a long history of practices simple (though by no means the exploitation of natural exist in a space of transition of global scanning through easy) gesture, Panayiotou hints resources (gold, coal, agricul- between three visible states: which, to use Heideggerian at another, perhaps utopian ture) in the expansionist move- the form given to them by the terms, the world and the earth geography that has been grad- ments of the modern world. original carvers, the new form (die Welt und die Erde) have ually constructed through the Consequently, Tonel’s Cosmic produced with the cut, and the been brought together in a poli- dissemination of the euro. And Trade can be considered as a state of raw material (mainly tical field. in yet another sense, devoid of sketch of the subconscious wood) revaled by the cut. In this its historical connotations, this history of 20th century eco- state of transiton, each thing [ 6 ] The work of Vangelis Vlahos en- work also expresses a meta- nomic dogma, as developed out floats in a space of multiple gages with the recent history of physical problem that ties of a series of naïvely optimistic appropriations and claims of Greece, endeavoring to de- money to the artwork: Turned to schemes that emerged during property. center official narratives and shreds, these banknotes are the multiple movements of open up potential new ones. now worthless as currency; yet colonial expansion – a history In the version presented at Witte For The End of Money Vlahos is the value of these shreds of that has no interest in limits, [ 5 ] de With, Peter Fischli and David presenting two parallel works paper is no longer nil because, and which in this sense is Weiss’ Sichtbare Welt (Visible that explore themes relevant by the hand of the artist, they responsible for persuading us World) (1987 – 2000) is a to the questions of economic have become art. that unlimited growth lies three-screen installation, with and political expansionism that within the realm of “natural” each screen playing a sequence are central to this exhibition. A more whimsical treatment of probability (that Nature is limit- of still images. Taken by the Respectively titled Grey Zones the capitalist ethos is found less, even if the earth isn’t). artists themselves, and pro- (2009) and Aircrafts on Ground in Earth – Moon – Box (Cosmic duced over a period of several (2009 – 2010), both of these Trade) (2011), a large wall In the installation produced by years, this work brings together works engage with recent [ 3 ] drawing by Tonel depicting an [ 4 ] the duo Hadley+Maxwell a peopleless views and land- history through collections of interplanetary conveyor belt. fantastical scaffold runs diag- scapes from all over the world. photographs found in the Gigantic boxes coming from the onally across the room, from Somewhat post-apocalyptic, archives of Greek newspapers. moon drop off the belt onto one wall to another. The design the images have a quality that The two collections of images Planet Earth. Whose “hand” is of the scaffold is a reference to evokes a very specific form of focus on two archetypically behind this “project”? What the architectural images that photographic engagement with modern forms of mass-move-

76 The End of Money 77 Exhibition Guide ment (sea and air transporta- shows a man standing before a creases in the region depicted. signify and how they circulate tion) presenting an intersection horizonless landscape. Clearly This economical but wonder- elsewhere is most likely unim- between the idea of movement drawing its structure from the fully evocative introduction is portant to the local makers, and the role or roles that representation of the “sublime then followed by a catalogue who nevertheless may not have Greece (with its uneasy place in nature,” the idea of the raisonné containing the proven- expected the rather bleak turn between Europe, the Eastern Sublime is nevertheless filtered ance, or record of ownership, that they take in Lili Reynaud- Mediterranean and North Africa) through a ubiquitous photo- for each painting. The oak panel Dewar’s work. The accompany- has played in a larger political graphic trope, one that might on which the two videos are ing video shows two young economy. Grey Zones is com- be called “corporate”: Keeping focused is, of course, a refer- women dressed identically, one posed of a series of 75 photo- in mind that this word means ence to the panels on which the younger looking than the other. graphs found in Greek news- “united in one body,” Saraceno’s paintings were executed. The two women exchange gifts, paper archives, depicting photograph of a lone looker Through this mimetic gesture, unwrap them, and then proceed U.S. and Russian ships sailing before a horizonless landscape Leiderstam inserts a material to put the entire collection in the Aegean. The ships represent evokes an image-world of that seems to have been left a suitcase. They then stroll treaties that the Greek state limitless imaginative projection. out of the painter’s economic through Paris and walk into a made, first with U.S. corpor- Here an analogy is drawn imagination, as a sort of “blind small urban forest where they ations, and later with the between the expansionist pro- spot”: wood, and specifically proceed to burn the contents Russian Navy. Both were short- jections of the human mind and oak – a material that the painter of the suitcase. One is tempted lived ventures (oil with the those of the economy. The did not incorporate into his to see this as a ritual, but all Americans, Navy ship repairs history of representations of the economy in spite of it providing this happens in a rather robotic with the Russians) that now Sublime in Nature is thus the skeleton for most archi- (or cybernetic) way, without exist only as vestiges of the the longue durée within which tecture before the use of iron, much ceremony. The objects Greek state’s efforts to develop Saraceno’s work functions. not to mention a durable that are burnt, however, are a (modern) economy around support for oil painting and exactly the same as those that the Aegean Sea. Aircrafts on [ 8 ] Simple, yet stunning, Matts religious iconography, as well rest on the table in the instal- Ground takes its title from a Leiderstam’s Provenance is a the material of for barrels and lation, imposing a metaphor of term in aviation maintenance two-channel video installation furniture. ≥ see transcript on time through which the visitor (AOG) which means that there that explores the relationship p. 127 is at once before and after the is a technical problem that between art, art dealing, real event. Such a gesture may be requires keeping an aircraft estate speculation and trade Wood is also the main material seen to allegorize the circuit that from flying. Giving this term a through a series of variations of [ 9 ] in Lili Reynaud-Dewar’s generates the production of non-technical turn, Vlahos’ work the 16th century Dutch land- Inaccurrencies, a video-instal- curios that are there, waiting for consists of a collection of scape painter Jan Van Goyen’s lation that involves a collection someone to buy them and take 57 images of airplanes from all views of Dordrecht, as depicted of objects which the artist them away to another world. over the world (Middle East, from the South. The two pro- acquired (in duplicate) during Europe, United States, and all jectors are focused on an oak a trip to Madagascar. At the Though fantastical in their over Africa) that were grounded panel that hangs in the middle time of her trip, and still today, speculations, the eschatological in Greece for – to put it euphe- of the room. On one side, a series Madagascar is one of the tropes of science-fiction have mistically – non-technical of almost identical paintings poorest countries in the world. come to exercise nearly total reasons: hijackings, threats, slowly cross-fade into each Its economy is based on a control over the imagination of and so on. other, giving the illusion of a rather insipid tourism – mostly [ 10 ] the future. Maha Maamoun’s changing atmosphere, as each French – around which the video 2026 (2010) takes a scene [ 7 ] Tomás Saraceno’s work was painting displays different paraphernalia that is presented from Chris Marker’s post-apoca- conceived around his utopian weather patterns. On the oppos- here has been invented and lyptic “photo-novel” La Jetée project of developing a cloud ite side of the oak panel a re-invented. Close attention (1962), and replaces the original city, models of which have been projected text scrolls down. to these objects will reveal the narration by a voice reading presented on many occasions. The text has an introduction nature of this industry, one from an Egyptian science-fiction This cloud city would drift indicating the range of eco- largely based on handicrafts novel by Mahmoud Uthman, around the world, disregarding nomic activities that van Goyen that, to the Western eye, are but titled The Revolution of 2053. cultural and geo-political fron- pursued – aside from painting, universal marks of economic The character of Marker’s La tiers. The photograph presented we are told, he was engaged in poverty and its impact on local Jetée lies on a hammoc with his here, titled Endless Big (2006), art dealing, real estate specu- cultural identity. These are, in eyes covered by a large white belongs to this project, and lation, and the tulip bulb trade; other words, things without a pad with cables attached to the introduces a register of pictori- we are also told that some of localized social life, which is to sections that cover the eyes alism that this exhibition also his drawings bear notes about say, things that are meant to and temples, while a voice reads explores. This enigmatic picture the prospects for value in- circulate elsewhere. What they a passage from Uthman’s

78 The End of Money 79 Exhibition Guide novel in the original Arabic. The [ 12 ] The work of Toril Johannessen is motif – “for the time being” – (Alejandro Otero, Jesús Soto, passage describes an agoniz- concerned with de-centering implying that the current lack etc.). Once Apóstol’s video shifts ingly disingenuous scene of the scientific knowledge by forcing of ideas might soon give way to to nighttime, one finds that the future wherein the Pyramids, exchanges between disparate more utopian designations of avenue becomes populated by presented in a landscape of elements and concepts on a the future. The installation is transsexuals who have named splendorous glory, become the scientific plane. The graphs that focused on a home-made tele- themselves after these artists set for a highly choreographed Johannessen has contributed prompter on which the artist’s and, at times, use the concepts banquet in the year 2026. to this exhibition appear both text “Technology and Production” associated with their work Rather than delivering the simple and logical: Revolutions unfolds. The same text runs (colofonía, for instance) as reader into a plausible future, in Time, for example, promises through two screens that hang euphemisms for sexual positions the novel lands in a series of an historical subject, but its behind the blue-screen. The and acts. In sections of the clichés profoundly rooted in a history, which is both social and text has the language of a avenue, night-life becomes the contemporary ideology that political, is here subjected to a manifesto, but it doesn’t seem site of a double dramatization is consumed by its investment rudimentary mathematical to give its subject the lashings of the historical narrative of art: in the here and now. ≥ see reduction. A note at the top of that this genre would have once ideologically, by the transcript on p. 129 the chart explains that “Time” normally applied. In the logic neighborhoods whose opinion means Time magazine, and that of a modernist manifesto, the is publicized in the murals they The critique of the contemporary the dates correspond to the axiomatic sentences about have made; a second time by utopian principle finds its deso- first and latest issues of this labour and technology that the transexuals, for whom the [ 11 ] late underpinnings in Agnieszka magazine. The chart thus illus- appear in Bismuth’s text should murals offer a range of possi- Kurant’s Future Anterior (2007). trates something that is only deflect towards accusatory bilities for developing characters Kurant’s work is composed of a tangentially related to the negations of the structure of and personae through which stack of The New York Times actual revolutions that have contemporary life. But here they individualize their pro- with several pages framed and taken place in the last 92 years: they are instead interspersed fession. Modern art and its sup- hanging on the wall. The entire We are looking at a chart that with somewhat fatalistic (or, porting narratives exist uneasily run of newspaper pages has shows how many times the in the language of pragmatic in the context of the Avenida been printed with thermochro- word “revolution” appears in conservatism, “realistic”) state- Libertador, where a recalcitrant matic ink so that as the room print, in this specific magazine, ments, of which the last sen- history of modernism subsists temperature rises the printed year by year. The other graphs tence is emblematic: “Techno- as a phantasm that can only be words become increasingly function in the same way. logical development is, for brought to life in the sexual faint, and as it drops they Alongside these graphs is a the time being, mankind’s only practices of a marginal class. become more and more visible. Dutch train-station clock that future.” ≥ see transcript on p. This oscillation between visi- the artist has re-programmed 130 Through their collaborative bility and invisibility is contin- so that its pace is contingent on [ 15 ] framework Goldin+Senneby gent on climatic conditions, the volume of activity registered [ 14 ] Alexander Apóstol’s short video (Simon Goldin and Jakob which are purportedly extrane- by the biggest servers powering opens with a daytime view of Senneby) have been exploring ous to the content of the news. the internet. As the volume of the Avenida Libertador in the geographies that are Nevertheless, this newspaper users rises the clock begins to Caracas, Venezuela. Once a produced through capital and of the future functions as a move faster, and as the volume monument to urban planning, finance, presenting these “standard” against which the decreases the clock also slows this avenue is now divided explorations as theatrical and steady progression of the world down. Rather than representing between two neighborhoods performative problems. For this towards catastrophe will soon time, with this clock time with seemingly unbridgeable exhibition Goldin+Senneby be measured. However bleak becomes contingent on the ideological discrepancies. In have produced The Discreet and barren, the future that is collective efforts of a community order to affirm their respective Charm (2011), a work that takes conjured in Kurant’s newspaper unaware of itself. ideologies, each neighborhood the form of a “pitch” for a is, unlike Uthman’s novel, quite has decorated the wall of this theater play about self-inter- believable. It is significant too [ 13 ] With its ominous title, Pierre avenue with their own version ested financial practices within that the future is only a few Bismuth’s Technological of Venezuelan art history: on contemporary banking. In years away, and that we get Development is for the Time the West side the murals theater, a scale-model of the closer to it by the day, noticing Being Mankind’s Only Future represent the landscape stage (model box) used to that adjustments we make in announces a familiar image in tradition of the beginning of the display the choreography of the present, they may be large the contemporary prophecies 20th century (Manuel Cabré, each scene, typically facilitates and dramatic, make absolutely about the future as a field of Armando Reverón, and so on) the communication between no impact on the image that technological totalitarianism. and on the East are represen- actors and members of the this newspaper gives us of a day Yet, this idea of the future tations of the much more production team, or between in September 2020. is moderated with a temporal recent constructivist tradition the theater company and poten-

80 The End of Money 81 Exhibition Guide tial producers and financiers – been arranged throughout the Works in the exhibition in every practical sense, the space, from which the voices of model box is a didactic device. the actors sometimes emerge And, if there is something to be suggesting a consciousness said about didacticism in con- that moves between subjects temporary economic life, it is and objects and that, in doing that it is mainly – if not only – so, seems to bring them closer used in order to steer the public to each other while remaining towards self-detrimental finan- alien to both. cial practices and investment, and seldom in order to explain To those familiar with English how best to use their economic [ 17 ] idioms, Lawrence Weiner’s resources. The Discreet Charm A CHIP TAKEN OFF OF AN OLD includes such a scale-model of BLOCK introduces a variation Witte de With, with all the elem- on the English expression ents that were present in the “a chip off the old block,” which exhibition space during the generally implies the inherit- performance enacted on the ance of character (father to son, opening night. ≥ see transcript for instance). But in adding the p. 131 verbal form “taken off,” Weiner has here evoked a sense of An often-overlooked argument purpose that the original idiom made by Gilles Deleuze and lacks. Thus, rather than being Félix Guattari in their seminal “fated” by inherited character A Thousand Plateaus (1980) traits, the invisible agent of this draws a parallel between statement may be seen to Capitalism and Western racism: actively sculpt “an old block.” both, they claimed, operate This is, to be sure, a syntactical not by exclusion, but by propa- problem that ties language to gating waves of sameness, until what linguists refer to as its everything in range has been “natural” form (spoken lan- either incorporated or wiped guages, in opposition to “formal” out. (One can easily say the or “constructed” ones). In this same for contemporary democ- sentence, as in all of Weiner’s racy). Imbued with an analo- work, concrete language must [ 16 ] gous critical attitude, Vishal contend with the active part Judgdeo’s Stage Design for that it plays in the construction Disassociation (2011) explores of the social, which is to say, as the ways in which the values of the element that constitutes economic exchange invade all the human subject as a “poli- forms of social exchange. The tical animal.” There are several installation includes two videos ways in which the sentence and a series of objects. The A CHIP TAKEN OFF OF AN OLD videos show two female actors BLOCK can be read in relation reading lines from a script for to The End of Money, but such what appears to be a talk show. interpretations are perhaps The lines they deliver are, as less significant here than the Jugdeo states, “riddled with way this sentence interpellates clichés about emotional healing the exhibition with questions from a distinctly popular and of the social, and of the genera- Western-capitalist perspective, tive role that language plays addressing ideas about loss, within it, forcing us to re-focus self-discovery, and the quest the discussion, from money to for happiness.” This video- society. installation is punctuated by an array of objects that have

82 The End of Money 83 National Geographic Magazine [ 0 ] Left: June 1974; right: June 2004

84 The End of Money 85 Works in the exhibition In Place of Capital (production stills) 2009; 2 colour photographs; 36 × 54 cm and 56 × 34 cm; courtesy of the artist

[ 1 ] Zachary Formwalt

86 The End of Money 87 Works in the exhibition Following page

2008, 2008; shredded money; At Face Value, 2008; single-channel 600 (diameter) × 240 cm (height); HD-video with sound, 22:30 min.; courtesy of the artist & Rodeo Gallery, courtesy of the artist Istanbul

[ 1 ] Zachary Formwalt [ 2 ] Christodoulos Panayiotou

88 The End of Money 89 Works in the exhibition 90 91 From the series Blurred, 2008 – 2009; several digital prints (inkjet) on paper; edition 10 / AP5; 21.6 × 27.9 cm each; courtesy of the artist

[ 3 ] Tonel

92 The End of Money 93 Works in the exhibition Following page from left to right

Earth – Moon – Box (Cosmic Trade), 2011; installation, wall drawing; courtesy of the artist

[ 3 ] Tonel

Grey Zones, 2009; 75 framed photo- graphs found in Greek newspaper archives; dimensions variable; Baltic Dry Index, 2009; watercolour on courtesy of the artist & The Breeder, paper; 56 × 77 cm; courtesy of the artist Athens

[ 3 ] Tonel [ 6 ] Vangelis Vlahos

94 The End of Money 95 Works in the exhibition 96 Name 97 Titel Grey Zones, 2009; 75 framed photo- graphs found in Greek newspaper archives; dimensions variable; courtesy of the artist & The Breeder, Grey Zones (detail) Athens

[ 6 ] Vangelis Vlahos Vangelis Vlahos

98 The End of Money 99 Works in the exhibition 100 The End of Money 101 Works in the exhibition Previous page

There is plenty of hope, but not for us, 2011; mixed-media installation with altered antiques, wood, plants, paint; Sichtbare Welt, 1987 – 2000; 3-channel dimensions variable; courtesy of the video; courtesy of the artists & Eva artists Presenhuber, Zurich

[ 4 ] Hadley+Maxwell [ 5 ] Peter Fischli & David Weiss

102 The End of Money 103 Works in the exhibition 104 The End of Money 105 Works in the exhibition Previous page from left to right

Provenance, 2007 – 2011; digital double projection on oak panel; panel 70 × 98 cm; courtesy of the artist & Wilfried Lentz, Rotterdam

[ 8 ] Matts Leiderstam

Endless Big, 2006; c-print mounted on aluminium behind 8 mm plexi, framed in white wooden frame; 180 × 120 cm; courtesy of the artist & Andersen’s Inaccurencies, 2011; video installation; Contemporary, Copenhagen courtesy of the artist

[ 7 ] Tomás Saraceno [ 9 ] Lili Reynaud-Dewar

106 The End of Money 107 Works in the exhibition Following page

Future Anterior, 2007; 8 framed pages, stack of 290 newspaper, thermo- chromic ink silkscreen on paper; 2026, 2010; DVD for video projection, 57 × 37.5 cm each; courtesy of the artist 9 min.; courtesy of the artist & Galeria Fortes Vilaça, São Paulo

[ 10 ] Maha Maamoun [ 11 ] Agnieszka Kurant

108 The End of Money 109 Works in the exhibition 110 Name 111 Titel Following page from left to right

Opposite page Words and Years (Revolutions in Time, Conventions in Time), 2011; Mean Time, 2011; clock; 65 × 53 × 65 cm; 6 inkjet prints on paper; 74 × 54 cm courtesy of the artist & Lautom each; courtesy of the artist & Lautom Contemporary, Oslo Contemporary, Oslo

[ 12 ] Toril Johannessen Toril Johannessen

112 The End of Money 113 Works in the exhibition 114 The End of Money 115 Works in the exhibition Technological Development is for the Time Being Mankind’s Only Future, 2011; real time closed-circuit television Opposite page installation; teleprompter, camera, computer, DVD players, MX50 panasonic Technological Development is for the videomixer, blue screen, LCD screens; Time Being Mankind’s Only Future courtesy of the artist & Jan Mot, Brussels (reverse view of installation)

[ 13 ] Pierre Bismuth Pierre Bismuth

116 The End of Money 117 Works in the exhibition Stage Design for Disassociation, 2011; mixed-media installation with HD- video on monitor and 4-channel sound- track; 13 min.; Cynthia Bond, Patricia Scanlon (Performers); courtesy of the artist & Thomas Solomon Gallery, Los Angeles

[ 16 ] Vishal Jugdeo

118 The End of Money 119 Works in the exhibition background: Aircrafts on Ground, Opposite page 2009 – 2010; 57 photographs under glass, wooden shelf; dimensions top: The Discreet Charm, 2011; variable; courtesy of the artist & The Goldin+Senneby with Pamela Carter Breeder, Athens (Playwright), Ismail Ertürk (Senior Lecturer in Banking), Anna Heymowska [ 6 ] Vangelis Vlahos (Set Designer), Hamadi Khemiri (Actor); courtesy of the artists

foreground: The Discreet Charm bottom: The Discreet Charm (model) (detail of model)

[ 15 ] Goldin+Senneby [ 15 ] Goldin+Senneby

120 The End of Money 121 Works in the exhibition

Previous page

A chip taken off of an old block, 2006; black cohesive foil; dimensions Av. Libertador, 2006; video DVD, variable; courtesy of the artist & Konrad 4:30 min.; courtesy of the artist & Fischer Galerie, Düsseldorf / Berlin Distrito 4, Madrid

[ 17 ] Lawrence Weiner [ 14 ] Alexander Apóstol

124 The End of Money 125 Works in the exhibition Transcripts from the exhibition 48.5 × 76 cm, hangs at the National Museum of Western Art in Tokyo. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, the painting was part of Paul P r o v e n a n c e Grand’s collection in Lyon. On November 21, Matts Leiderstam 1974, Galerie Nathan in Zurich purchased the painting at auction in Paris, and in 1978 the The painting Vy från Dordrecht, 1655 (1653?), oil painting was sold to the museum in Japan. on panel, 66.8 × 98.2 cm, is owned by the National- museum in Stockholm. Beck no. 296, View of Dordrecht and the Grote Kerk from across the Maas, 1644, oil on panel, Between 1641 and 1655, the artist Jan van Goyen 64.8 × 97.2 cm, hangs at the Walker Art Gallery in returned regularly to the same subject: Dordrecht, Liverpool, England. The painting was very likely regarded as the oldest and most venerable city purchased by Henry Blundell, who lived in the in the Dutch Republic. Most of the paintings same city, or by his son Charles Robert Blundell, depict the city from the south – a coastline in the at some point between 1803 and 1837, and distance, dominated by the Grote Kerk, some incorporated into the family’s art collection at windmills, and a large number of boats on the Ince Blundell Hall. The picture was inherited River Meuse. The horizon is set low, and the sky from the Blundell family by Lieutenant Colonel overwhelms the landscape. Only one of van Humphrey Weld’s family. The painting was stolen Goyen’s drawings from that perspective has sur- on December 29 1990 from Lulworth Manor in vived to our day. It can be found in a sketchbook Dorset, but was returned several years later by from around 1648, belonging to Staatliche the Sussex police. “H.M. Government” recovered Kunstsammlungen in Dresden. Throughout his the picture in “lieu of inheritance tax” from life, van Goyen engaged in a number of business Colonel Sir Joseph James Weld’s estate and it activities. This included auctioneering, art dealing, was granted to the museum in the year 2000. as well as speculation in land and tulip bulbs. In some of his drawings, one can find notes about Beck no. 296a, View of Dordrecht from the Dordtse the potential for property value increases in the Kil, 1644, oil on panel, 65 × 96 cm, hangs at the depicted region. National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. The art dealer Eugene Glaenzer, with business activ- Jan van Goyen painted the views of Utrecht and ities in both New York and Paris, sold the paint- Leiden eight times each, the Hague nine times, ing in 1906 to Baron Vladimir de Gunzburg from Arnhem eighteen times, Rhenen twenty-seven Paris. His son, Serge de Gunzburg, in Geneva times, and Dordrecht thirty times, of which twenty- inherited the painting and sold it via Galerie Heim two depict the city from the south. Nijmegen he in Paris to the museum in Washington in February painted no fewer than thirty-one times. Some of 1978. these paintings are on canvas, but most are on oak panels, divided into three parts. The colour is Beck no. 298, Gezicht op Dordrecht/Vue de applied on a white ground with thin brushwork – Dordrecht, 1644 / 1653, oil on canvas, 97 × 148 cm, darker parts with a lightly flowing semi-trans- is at Koninklijke Musea voor Schone Kunsten parent colour, and lighter parts with a thicker, van België/Musées royaux des Beaux-Arts de opaque colour. The pale under-painting shines Belgique in Brussels. The painting is signed with through in the water and the sky. Hans-Ulrich monogram and date, 1653, on the small ferry Beck has recorded all the artist’s paintings in his on the left side. A signature and a different date, book Jan van Goyen, 1596 – 1656: 2, Katalog der 1644, can be found on the small ferry on the Gemälde. The picture at the Nationalmuseum is right. Finally, there is a fake signature and date “Beck no. 317”, and its first well-known owner on the lower left side: “A. Cuyp fecit 1655”. The was King Adolf Fredrik. In 1771, Gustaf III bought first known owner was Comte de Robiano from the painting from his father’s estate. After the Brussels. His heirs sold it to the art dealer and King’s death in 1792, the painting went to the collector M. John Wilson from Paris, who sold the Swedish government, and with the founding of painting at auction in Paris on March 14, 1881, the museum’s that same year, it became part of where the Brussels museum bought the painting. the collection. Beck no. 299, Blick uber die Merwede auf Beck no. 295a, Mouth of the Meuse (Dordrecht) / Dordrecht, 1644, oil on canvas, 104 × 134 cm, Masukako (Dorudorehito), 1644, oil on panel, hangs in Vienna at the Kunsthistorisches

126 127 Transcripts from the exhibition Museum. An exhibition catalogue from 1878 after the war, the Dutch state took charge of the Vienna and the collector J. Böhler from Munich ve been wiped out of existence. The only building reveals that the first known owner of the picture painting. The Goudstikker family’s claim of what became the new owner. Christian Langaard from visible on the horizon is the big Egyptian Museum. was G. Rohan in Paris. On May 29, 1890, the remained of their collection began in 1946 when Oslo bought the painting in 1909 for his collection Statues. Pharaonic chariots. And various anti- painting was sold at auction. One “Marquis de X Goudstikker’s widow returned to Holland for the and, according to his will, it was then donated to quities in glass vitrines. Indirectly lit and dotting du Château C” in Paris sold the painting again first time from her present residency in New the museum after his death in 1923. the space in a wonderful way. at auction on March 31, 1914. In 1920, the York, US. The Netherlands Institute for Cultural painting could be found at the art dealership Heritage / Instituut Collectie Nederland, Rijswijk / Gezicht op de Merwede voor Dordrecht, oil on I see a number of huge glass spheres around the Trotti & Cie in Paris, who then sold it in 1923 to Amsterdam placed the picture with the Dordrecht panel, 55.5 × 72 cm, hangs at the Rijksmuseum Dome Restaurant. Some of them are restaurants the Kunsthistorisches Museum. Museum in 1948 as a loan. in Amsterdam. The painting was sold at auction and nightclubs, and some are conference and in Amsterdam by Johan van der Marck from celebration halls. I also see hanging glass bridges Beck no. 305, La Meuse à Dordrecht avec la Grote In January of 1998, with the “Black Book” as the Leiden on August 25, 1773 to J. J. De Bruyn, from connecting the spheres at certain floors. Great Kerk; vue prise au sud-ouest, 1647, oil on panel, primary evidence, Marei von Saher, from Con- Amsterdam, who in turn sold it to A. Van der precision in every architectural detail. Transparent 74 × 108 cm, hangs at the Louvre in Paris. It was necticut, USA, widow of the Goudstikkers’ son Werff van Zuidland from Dordrecht on Septem- surfaces. Fine metallic lines. Endless expanses given to the royal collection (“l’ancienne collection”) Edo, reopened the case with the help of her Dutch ber 12, 1778. He auctioned it on July 31, 1811 but of green as far as the eyes can see. at an unknown date, and in 1830 was registered counsel Prof. H. M. N. Scholis and R. O. N. van then decided to buy the work back. A. Lacoste under the title Marine. However, on the frame Holthes. On February 6, 2006, a final decision was from Dordrecht sold it at auction once again on Up close I can see tables with food, placed in or- there is a different title: Vue de Dordrecht. taken in von Saher’s favor by the State Secretary July 10, 1832 to J. Rombouts, of Dordrecht, who derly geometrical arrangements. The tables are for the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science then bequeathed it to L. Dupper Wz, also a resi- meticulously decorated, with fabulous statues Beck no. 310, View of Dordrecht, 1649, oil on panel, who followed a recommendation from the Dutch dent of Dordrecht. In 1870, the Rijksmuseum carved from ice, melting very slowly. There are all 68.5 × 99.5 cm, hangs at the Toledo Museum of Restitutions Committee. acquired the painting as an authentic Jan van kinds of food. I’ll try to get closer… I can’t recog- Art in Ohio, USA. The picture’s journey can be Goyen. However, in his book Kunstler um Jan van nize a lot of the food, but there is clearly a lot of traced from the art collector Charles Butler in In the spring of 2007 the painting was returned Goyen, 1990, Hans-Ulrich Beck describes the seafood. Caviar… sushi… huge lobsters…. London to Galerie Charles Sedelmeyer in Paris, to Goudstikker’s heiress, along with two hundred painting (previously Beck no. 316) as falsely which, according to a catalogue, owned it in 1894. and one other art works that had been placed in attributed to van Goyen. The picture was actually Everyone is wearing extremely strange yet ele- In October that same year, M. Knoedler & Co, Dutch art museums. The family decided to sell painted in 1660 by Jeronymus van Diest (II) gant clothes. Most of them don’t look Egyptian. New York had purchased the painting and then eighty-three of them at auction via Christie’s in (1631 – 1673). Furthermore, Beck shows that Their features are Eastern but they’re not Arab. sold it in 1897 to J. Eastman Chase, collector and New York on April 19, 2007, in London on July 5, the Queen of the Netherlands, a private collector Some look European and some Asian. Everyone art dealer from Boston. David P. Kimball, also 2007, and in Amsterdam on November 14, 2007. in Lausanne, and Szépmûvészeti Múzeum in is eating extremely slowly. Like they’re in a slow- from Boston, bought the painting and sold it to The sales totaled $ 9.924.800, £ 3.120.400 and Budapest also possess views of Dordrecht paint- motion film. the art dealer Robert Vose, also a resident of € 1.196650 respectively. Gezicht op de Oude Maas ed by the same artist’s hand, each of which had the city. Arthur J. Secur, a businessman from te Dordrecht, however, was not put up for sale. previously been attributed to van Goyen. I can’t see any waiters. Next to each table there is Toledo in Ohio, then bought the painting in 1924 The picture was shown together with thirty- a hologram. When someone passes their hand and donated it to the museum in 1933. seven other pieces at an exhibition, Reclaimed – ≥ [ 8 ] over it, different kinds of food and drink appear Paintings from the Collection of Jacques from an opening in the middle of the table. Beck no. 312, Gezicht op de Oude Maas te Goudstikker, under its English title View of the Dordrecht, 1651, oil on panel, 66.7 × 97 cm, is Oude Maas near Dordrecht at the Bruce Museum, 2 0 2 6 There’s something strange in the background. hanging at the Dordrecht Museum. The painting Greenwich, Connecticut, USA, May 10 – Septem- Maha Maamoun Something’s not right. The background of the was sold at Christie’s in London as lot 70 for ber 7, 2008. During the run of the exhibition, the Pyramids looks natural, but the background of £ 2.730 on July 18, 1930 by the A. J., the Earl of Dordrecht Museum negotiated with Goudstikker’s An enchanting night, the sky is clear, stars are the opposite side of the Pyramids does not look Balfour, Whittingham, Haddingtonshire, England. heiress and made a deal to purchase the picture shining, and the moon is full. It’s so big that it natural. There’s a strange line in the ground… A The buyer was art dealer and collector Jacques on September 9, 2008 for € 3.500.000. The paint- looks like it will touch the ground by the pyramids’ wall. A thin wall surrounds the whole area. Its not Goudstikker from Amsterdam. Goudstikker, of ing received a new frame in September 2009 plateau and the Sphinx. The whole place is lit a normal wall. It’s a gigantic screen. Screening Jewish descent, died in an accident on May 16, and a reprint of the museum’s postcard of the pic- by indirect lighting. The foot of the middle pyramid a virtual image of the extension of the pyramids’ 1940 while aboard the ship SS Bodegraven ture was ordered in 2010 from Art Unlimited, is intricately designed, the floor is marble and plateau onto the horizon, and hiding the view of during his escape from the Nazi invasion, and Amsterdam with the information: “Riviergezicht has wonderful luminous inscriptions that look like the crumbling old city behind it. the painting was thus left behind. With him was op Dordrecht, 1651, paneel, 67,2 × 98,1 cm.” they were lit from below. Everything is clean and an inventory notebook (known as the “Black glittering. And there is no trace of the dust of the There’s a surveillance tower every 10 meters in Book”) recording the pictures left in his gallery. In Beck no. 315, Elveparti ved Dordrecht, oil on panel, pyramids’ plateau. the wall. Next to every tower there’s a room. And July of 1940, Hermann Göring and his banker 47.5 × 75.5 cm, is at the Nasjonalgalleriet in Oslo. there are people monitoring the place through and art dealer Alois Miedl took possession of the The canvas was sold at auction in Vienna on From another angle, I see the Sun Boat shinning screens and other devices. painting through a forced sale from Goudstikker’s June 5, 1871 under the title Ansicht von Delft as inside a glass structure, like it’s floating… All mother, along with the rest of the collection part of the estate of the artist Erasmus von around the Pyramids, there is nothing but green Something is happening… There are signals from (estimated at 1,400 art works) for a trifling sum. Engert. A “Dr. Meyer” bought the painting and in expanses, immaculately designed. the towers and something moving in the distance. 1901 introduced it in a catalogue as part of S. B. A car. A car is coming from a distance. Armored When approximately three hundred and fifty of Goldschmidt’s collection in Frankfurt am Main. I don’t see any buildings around the place. There and with dark opaque windows. Raising a lot of the paintings were returned from Germany On March 11, 1907, the canvas was auctioned in is no trace of any informal settlements. Like they’ dust around it. The car slows down. I see a lot of

128 The End of Money 129 Transcripts from the exhibition children running after the car and surrounding it. form of work. We are experiencing what is no T h e D i s c r e e t C h a r m Perhaps I can quote a little for you if I can The children are almost naked. Wearing rags. doubt the most evolved phase of democracy of Meta-Finance remember it … yes … Shaved heads and big deep eyes. Skin on bone. in that no class, or social group, is exempted Goldin+Senneby Like skeletons. from this task. Qu’une Banque s’abatte, du vague, du médiocre, The curator introduces the piece … ‘Welcome du gris’ … oh … They try to hold onto the car and to enter it by any It would be a mistake to think that the unem- to the Witte de With … the show … this is The stage managers begin to set up the theatre means. They are screaming hysterically and ployed do not work. All men work if they have the The Discreet Charm of Meta-Finance by Goldin scene from The Discreet Charm of the banging the car. The car is moving steadily. Noth- means to contribute to the flow of production. and Senneby.’ He sits. He has made no mention Bourgeoisie. Ismail pauses to watch for a few ing affects it. As if it were moving in another of Ismail. moments and then carries on. time. The car moves towards a room next to a Unemployment benefits are the state’s indirect surveillance tower. The children scream louder contribution to the flow of the economy. It helps We watch the projection of the box of the gallery The title of my talk comes from Bunuel’s film and louder. They stop all of a sudden and look the young to join the flow of production and the space … just chairs set for the lecture. ‘The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie’ … you’ve towards the tower. As if they’ve heard a signal. most disadvantaged not to leave it. Recipients Ismail who has been sitting in the front row, probably spotted this already. In the film, a of these benefits have a debt to society in that stands and takes his place to the side of the group of sophisticated, attractive, powerful people Something opens in the wall and bags are thrown everyone should be capable of working autono- projected image. keep trying to eat dinner together but are inter- out, about 20 meters away from the wall. The mously to sustain the flow of production. rupted again and again … they have their cake but bags open when they hit the ground. The children Hello / Hi … thank you Juan … they never get to eat it in peace. leave the car and run to the bags. Grabbing. The economy is based on production, and this is Hitting. Snatching. A terrible fight over food. At driven by technological progress. And yes, welcome to the ‘The Discreet Charm of I like to think of bankers as charming … they have the same time, the car starts moving slowly into Meta-Finance’ … which is actually the title of manners, influence, education, they build iconic the room and the door closes behind it. A finely Technology does not free man from labour. It aug- my lecture … an idea I approached Simon and buildings, they collect art, build temples of dressed man and woman step out of the car. ments the field of labour for each individual and Jakob … or Goldin and Senneby … an idea I culture and knowledge. They see and represent The wall facing them is glass, opening onto the makes us increasingly autonomous with regard to approached them with some weeks ago … a pro- themselves as civilised people … but they also pyramids’ plateau. As for the other 3 walls, they others. posal to talk about finance within the context brought the world economy to collapse. are like the other wall, screening images of fabu- of their art work. lous natural landscapes. Autonomy created by technology is considered It’s almost half a decade since the subprime crisis freedom. I first encountered the artists last year as they erupted. Right now, in the EU, economies like The Revolution of 2053: The Beginning were starting out on their own investigation those of Greece, Portugal and Ireland are in ser- (excerpt) by Mahmoud Uthman Technological research is a speculative system into the nature of financial speculation as a kind ious trouble. But the paradox is that the bankers whose motivation is the very possibility of techno- of theatre … a theatre which creates its own who caused the crisis in the first place are ≥ [ 10 ] logical progress. Technological innovations are realities and actors and stories … so they say. getting huge bonuses and it’s something that developed well before their application is con- Their project is called ‘The Nordenskiöld Model’ people have difficulty in understanding. ceived. It is only once technological innovations I believe. Technology and Production are operational that applications are sought. Back in Bunuel’s film, the main characters arrive Pierre Bismuth This is their model of the gallery, of course. It is to dine at a house only to find that everything … Technology is not there to solve problems but to not in my control. the decorations, the food are stage props. A cur- Today, human activity seems to consist essentially create potential for exploitation and capitalisation. tain rises and they find themselves seated at a of working to build and maintain the economy: A model of the ‘real’ Ismail is placed in the table on a theatre stage, they don’t know their work on the one hand and the acquisition of pro- Technology has become in the end the model for model box. lines … the audience begins to boo … they try to ducts (goods and services) on the other. life as we impose to our own existence the im- carry on … it’s a very famous scene, which I par- perative of constant improvement and develop- And here I am … Ismail Ertürk. … I’m honoured ticularly like … Work and acquiring products are in fact one and ment inherent in technological production. and maybe a little surprised to be talking to you, the same thing that is basically contributing to here at this gallery as part of this show. It’s not A model of Stephen Hester has appeared in the the flow of production. The term “consumption” Technological development is for the time being my usual … habitat you could say. I’m a Lecturer scene. The stage managers begin to dismantle is no longer appropriate for this system because mankind’s only future. in Banking at the Manchester Business School the film scene. the acquisition phase is now an integral part of in the UK … you think that’s quite boring perhaps work. In this sense, free time is also an integral 14.12.2009 … but I like art … I think art has things to say But this is Stephen Hester … the CEO of the Royal part of work. about economics … it’s always been interested in Bank of Scotland … not a character from Bunuel’s ≥ [ 13 ] economics … take the French poet Mallarmé for film. In 2010, he received a 7.7 million pound We are no longer slaves of any other individual, example … do you know Stephane Mallarmé? In bonus. This is at a time when the UK government as the existence of all men, without distinction, his poème critique ‘or’ … that’s the title ‘or’ … it was making the biggest public spending cuts in is driven by one and the same thing: production means ‘gold’ … in French. In this poem he makes its history and customers of the bank were com- and the flow of production. a comparison between real gold, which is cur- plaining about not getting loans … this bank, rency and, in his eyes, worthless, and this idea of by the way, is now 80 per cent owned by the UK Contributing to the flow of production should be a ‘poet’s gold’ … which he thinks has real value government. considered as the most advanced contemporary of course.

130 The End of Money 131 Transcripts from the exhibition When he was asked to justify his high bonus But there’s this huge complexity … or should we banking’ is the summary term explaining all types Diagram 3 has been removed and the scene Hester said “It’s out of my control, it’s the board, call it ‘sophistication’ … here … as those loans of various financial transactions between rating of the animals invading the music room in shareholders and remuneration committee are converted into collateralised debt obli- agencies, special purpose vehicles, hedgefunds, Exterminating Angel is set up. who decide.” gations and securitised, and tranched and private equity and so on. traded between financial institutions … rating In 2007, Andrew Low, another academic, thought So … he can’t justify his bonus by pointing out that agencies, hedgefunds, pension funds are all So this picture of the recent financial economy is basing economics and finance on physics isn’t the economy is doing well because of his bank’s involved transacting between themselves. very interesting because there’s no reference to appropriate so instead he proposed using biology, performance or by the bank helping its custom- the real economy at all. and he’s developing behavioural finance as an ers. The bonus is justified by making reference to Now I realise I’ve started to use specialised alternative. other financial activities, actors and institutions terminology, some of which you may not have Now if you felt confident working your way round … it is self-referential. heard before … or you’ve heard but don’t know this model you might say there is a reference So what we get, as banking runs into problems, what it means. to the real economy here somewhere… you might as meta-finance runs into problems, is it looking So this is the realm of self-referential finance. identify a box containing ‘reference assets’ for a new way of understanding or justifying Or what I call meta-finance. Financial institutions Securitisation’ for example … this is the process because these are supposed to be loans made itself. But it does so by replacing physics envy with cannot justify their existence by how they con- of banks selling their loans on to other financial to households and to corporations. But really, biology envy. tribute to the real economy … the one you and institutions … they are not actual loans themselves but deriva- I live in day to day … but by making references to tives of securitised loans … they’re contracts An article in the financial times in 2009 said aca- some other processes that are purely within the During this next section, the diagram is removed based on non-existent loans. demics were ransacking a range of other discip- financial world. and a film scene of the group walking down the lines in the quest for a better understanding and road is set up. So this is the ultimate picture of meta-finance that search has ranged from evolutionary biology 3 years ago the CEO of Lehman Brothers was where banks don’t even need to make a loan to behavioural psychology to thermo dynamics questioned about the 200 million dollars worth So the bank who buys the securitised loan knows to create financial assets which other financial and chaos theory. of bonuses he received between 2000 and 2008. the bank it buys the loan from but doesn’t know institutions invest in. They just need to make He said, “We had a compensation committee the borrower. Then the loan’s sold on again, so reference to a future loan that has not been made Now we know that some economists like John that spent a tremendous amount of time making now no one knows who originated the loan. So yet. Maynard Keynes call the urge or the instinct sure that the interests of the executives and the real economy disappears through securitisa- to make money an ‘animal instinct’. And so I’m not the employees were aligned with shareholders.” tion … Diagram 3 is removed to reveal the model of so sure how much of a role science has to play Bunuel’s priest. in explaining this kind of behaviour. You’ll know Lehman Brothers … 619 billion dollars, But I’m ambivalent about explaining these terms. the largest bankruptcy in the U.S. Actually the There is mystery … mystification here … finance I particularly like this character of the priest. I So really what I think we have here is a world of bank had a very interesting con-temporary art is a mystified world … and there’s a danger I make think meta-finance also has its priests … whose meta-finance. And just like the characters in an- collection … the aim of the acquisition policy it seem reasonable, rational, scientific. job it is to teach and sanctify. In one scene in the other film of Bunuel’s ‘The Exterminating Angel’ … was to both improve the working environment of film, the priest … in fact, he’s bishop ‘Monsignor bankers like those characters are entrapped in the bankers and also to support artists at early Simon and Jakob explained this idea of the model Dufour’ … he’s played by the actor Julien Bertheau a room, which they cannot leave, and they have stages of their careers …I think the art critic box presentation to me. It happens in theatre … … anyway, he asks a peasant woman why she no connection with the outside reality. Sarah Thornton called the collection ‘visionary’ … or when theatre is being made … a designer or doesn’t believe in god but he doesn’t listen to her with artists like Damien Hirst, Gerhard Richter, director … I’m not sure … uses the model box to answer … oh … Here sheep and a bear find their way into the Julie Mehretu, John Baldessari … and interest- sell the concept of the show to the producers … room with them. ingly, Baldessari caused con-sternation in 1970 or to demonstrate the design of the show to the Diagram 3 has reappeared. by claiming that it wasn’t Andy Warhol who actors before it’s made for real. Or this is what The wall goes down in front of the Exterminating was the most influential person in art but Luis Simon and Jakob told me that Pamela Carter … But back to finance … now this model had big Angel scene. Ismail is removed. Bunuel … he had already recognised that film … this is the name of the playwright they work with support from the likes of Robert Merton … … they told me this is what she told them … how Merton is an economist who won the Nobel Prize So it looks like this is where I make my exit. I’ll Diagram 2 has appeared in the camera lens theatre is made. in 1997 for developing an option pricing model … leave you here with the entrapment. Please enjoy obscuring the model box behind it. an algorithm, which revolutionised finance … your art. But it’s not something I know much about. I don’t specifically derivatives trading. In 2002 he said But I’m here to talk about finance … this is a really go to the theatre … I much prefer film as I his option pricing model was developed entirely Thank you and goodbye. diagram developed by the Bank of England. said … avant-garde film in particular … within the academic research community and was the result of the science of finance. He really Credit: Pamela Carter (Playwright) & It describes the kind of economics where the Diagram 3 has appeared obscuring the scene in believed that finance was science. Ismail Ertürk (Senior Lecturer in Banking, financial economy, the business of banking … the model box. University of Manchester here … exists to support the real economy … So this is economics and finance aspiring to be here … which is … corporations borrowing from Now this diagram was prepared by the Federal like physics or chemistry so this is what we call ≥ [ 15 ] banks and subprime mortgages … low income Reserve Bank of New York in 2009, it took them physics envy. Merton isn’t the only academic to people borrowing from banks to own their houses. about 2 or 3 years to do this. And it describes think that financial innovations have come about what they call ‘shadow banking’. And ‘shadow through science.

132 The End of Money 133 Transcripts from the exhibition Statement on the work merchant and naval auxiliary vessels at the Aircrafts on Ground Greek-owned Neorion Shipyards on the Aegean Vangelis Vlahos island of Syros. “Koyda” was the first Soviet G r e y Z o n e s ship that arrived for repairs in the shipyards. In “Aircraft on Ground” (AOG) is a term in aviation Vangelis Vlahos the late 1960s and 1970s the Soviet naval forces maintenance indicating that a problem is serious had greatly expanded its presence in the Medi- enough to prevent an aircraft from flying. In The project consists of two sets of photographs terranean. For the Soviets, the need for a naval contrast to the usual image of planes flying, the found in Greek newspaper archives that have presence in the area was an issue of military project involves a collection of photographs and reference to two cases of Greek initiatives of the as well as political importance. Taking also into magazine clips depicting civil aviation aircrafts utilization of the Aegean Sea in the 1970s. account the Soviet Union’s lack of bases in on ground. All the images included involve The first set of images involves the “Wodeco” the broader region, the agreement of Neorion aircrafts from the Middle East, Greece, United ship, an American drill-ship that was used for was considered important for establishing its States and Africa, related mainly to an incident the exploitation of Greece’s oil fields in the Aegean political influence. The issue provoked the (such as accidents, terrorist attacks, hijackings, Sea in the mid 1970s. The second set involves reaction of the United States, NATO and Turkey official visits, bad weather conditions, etc.) that the “Koyda,” a soviet auxiliary vessel that inaug- arguing that this agreement disrupts the military either took place in Greece or which involved urated the bilateral agreement between Greece balance in the area. In the following decades Greece in some way. The images cover almost and the Soviet Union in late 1970s in order for Neorion shipyards faced many challenges that three decades (1970s, 1980s, 1990s and early the Soviet vessels to use the Greek shipyards in almost led it into going out of business, but 2000s) and are presented on a shelf in chrono- Syros Island for repairs. managed to survive, diversifying into new fields logical order, albeit without any reference or like the construction of luxury mega-yachts. information about their original context. No In the Aegean, the term “Grey Zones” has a poli- dramatic images are included. The images were tical impact mostly related to local issues that “Grey Zones,” 2009 (75 photographs) found in different Greek newspaper archives. deal with the delimitation of Greece’s and Turkey’s zones of influence. The concept was first intro- ≥ [ 6 ] The project, consisting exclusively of images duced by the Turkish authorities after the Imia / depicting grounded planes, indirectly links a Kardak crisis in early 1996, in order to describe 1 variety of different political and social incidents the areas of undetermined sovereignty, specifi- In July 1976 the Turkish research vessel Hora from the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s, a politically cally regarding several islets in the Eastern entered the Aegean beyond the Turkish territorial and socially loaded transitional period in Greece. waters. Andreas Papandreou, the leader of the Aegean. Several of the issues involve the delimi- opposition Socialist party at the time, called to The project takes the form of a chain of images tation of both countries’ air-space and national sink the vessel (“sink the Hora”). The vessel “Hora” that in some way have Greece as their backdrop, waters. These issues owe their controversy to the was later renamed Sismik I. connected to each other by the descriptive refer- geographical peculiarity of the Aegean Sea and ence of an aircraft on ground. its territories. The decades since the 1970s have 2 In late March 1987, when a Greek-based inter- seen a series of political and military tensions national consortium, announced that it would Through a series of different incidents related to between Greece and Turkey over the Aegean, with start searching oil in international waters east of civil aircrafts on the ground, the AOG project most important incidents namely the “Hora” Thasos Island, Turkey sent the survey ship Sismik I attempts to produce an abstract narrative of a crisis1 of 1976, the “Sismik I” crisis2 of 1987 and into the Aegean, flanked by warships. The Greek socially and politically transitional period in the Imia / Kardak crisis3 of 1996. Prime Minister of the time, Andreas Papandreou Greece, presenting an allegorical and abstract gave the orders to sink the ship, if found within overview of this transitional time (covering the Greek waters. This incident nearly started a war About Wodeco: In the aftermath of the 1973 oil between Greece and Turkey. last four years of the Greek dictatorship (1967- crisis, Greece, like many other countries at the 1974), the period after its fall in 1974 and the time, embarked on a systematic effort to discover 3 socialist governments in Greece of the 1980s and and exploit its local energy resources. In the mid Imia in Greek, or Kardak in Turkish is a set of two 1990s). What would the outcome be if I tried to 1970s the “Wodeco” drill-ship of the U.S. oil com- small uninhabited islets in the Aegean Sea, find images of aircrafts on ground from different situated between the Greek island chain of the pany Oceanic made its first successful offshore Dodecanese and the southwestern mainland historical periods? What would be the differences oil strike in the Prinos location a few miles south- coast of Turkey. Imia / Kardak was the object of between the reasons preventing an aircraft from east of Thassos at the Northern part of Aegean a military crisis and subsequent dispute over flying in the 1970s, in the 1990s and today? Are Sea. In the early 1980s local oil production had sovereignty between Greece and Turkey in 1996. there analogies between these differences and managed to cover almost 13 percent of the the changes in Greek politics of the same period country’s petroleum needs. By the late of 1980s that the images of the airplanes cover? production started to drop without being able to explore for new deposits. Today it seems to be a “Aircrafts on Ground,” 2009 – 2010 (57 images) problematic utility with no prospect for the future. ≥ [ 6 ] About Koyda: In September 1979 Moscow signs an agreement with Greece for repairs of Soviet

134 The End of Money 135 Statement on the work Biographies The Projection Project and All That Is (2004). Recent group exhibitions in- Solid Melts Into Air. In 2005 he co- clude Photographic Typologies, Tate curated Honoré d’O: “The Quest” in the Modern, London (2010 – 11); Modelos A u t h o r s Belgian pavilion at the 51st Venice para Armar, MUSAC, León (2010); Dessislava Dimova is a writer and Biennale; he has also curated solo Der Brief aus Jamaika, Oi Futuro, Río de curator based in Brussels. She is exhibitions of Roy Arden (Vancouver Art Janeiro (2010); Painting in the Glass currently completing her PhD at the Gallery, 2007), Steven Shearer (De House: Artist revisit modern architec- Institute for Art Studies, Bulgarian Appel, Amsterdam, 2007), Zin Taylor ture, The Aldrich Contemporary Art Academy of Sciences, Sofia. In 2010 (Ursula Blickle Stiftung, Kraichtal, Museum, Ridgefield, Connecticut; she curated Thank You for Your Under- 2011), as well as small-scale group Islands+Guettos, NGBK. Neue Gesell- standing – 2. International Antakya shows in galleries and institutions in schaft für Bildende Kunst, Berlin; and Biennial in Turkey. Recent projects Belgium and Germany. He is an editor Building Pictures, Museum of Con- include Anetta Mona Chisa and Lucia of Afterall as well as a contributing temporary Photography, Chicago (all Tkacova, Material Culture: Things in our editor to A Prior Magazine, a co-founder 2008); Lo(s) Cinetico(s), Museo Hands, (Christine König Gallery, Vienna, of FR David and a tutor at both De Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia 2011) and The Bulgarian Pavilion Project Appel in Amsterdam and Piet Zwart MNCARS, Madrid; andHabitat/ (www.bulgarianpavilion.org, 2011). Institute in Rotterdam. Roelstraete has Variations, BAC Bâtiment d’Art Con- Founding member of Art Affairs and published extensively on contempor- temporain, Geneva (both 2007). Apóstol Documents Foundation, Sofia and ary art and related philosophical issues has also participated in the Venice founding editor of blistermagazine.com. in numerous catalogues and journals; Biennale (2011), San Juan Triennial Her first novel “The Portrait of the his latest book, Richard Long: A Line (2010), Prague Biennale (2005 Artist as a Young Man” was published Made By Walking, was published by and 2003), Istanbul Bienali (2003) and in Bulgarian in 2009 (Razvitie, Sofia). Afterall Books / The MIT Press. He lives Bienal de São Paulo (2002). in Berlin. Juan A. Gaitán has been a curator at Pierre Bismuth (Paris, France, 1963). Witte de With since 2009. He was Carolina Sanín has published the novel Lives and works in Brussels, Belgium. trained as an art historian and aesthetic Todo en otra parte (Seix-Barral, 2005), Recent solo exhibitions include Le theorist at the University of British the biographical essay Alfonso X versant de l’analyse, Jan Mot, Brussels; Columbia in Vancouver. He has curated (Panamericana, 2009), the children’s Le psy, l’artiste et le cuisinier, Nuit several exhibitions internationally, the book Dalia (Norma, 2010) and the short Blanche, Musée d’art et d’histoire du most recent being Models for Taking story collection Ponqué y otros cuentos judaïsme, Paris; Pierre Bismuth, Part (Vancouver and Toronto) and The (Norma, 2010). Sanín holds a bachelor’s Fremantle Arts Center, Fremantle; and End of Money at Witte de With. His most degree from the Universidad de los La galerie est heureuse de vous inviter à recent essays have been published in Andes and a PhD in Spanish and la nouvelle exposition de Pierre Bismuth, Afterall, The Exhibitionist, and the Portuguese Literature from Yale Uni- Galerie Bugada & Cargnel, Paris (all series Ten Fundamental Questions of versity. Currently a professor of 2010); Objects That Should Have Curating in Mousse magazine. Spanish literature and creative writing Changed Your Life, Base Progetti per at the Universidad de los Andes, she l’Arte, Florence; Following the Right Donatien Grau graduated in the Classics also taught at Purchase College-SUNY Hand of…, Team Gallery, New York (both at the Ecole Normale Supérieure and and lived for 7 years in Barcelona, 2009); The All Seeing Eye (The Hardcore the Sorbonne, in Paris, where he now where she worked as a translator. She Techno Version), British Film Institute, teaches. He serves as a member of the writes a column for the Sunday edition London; Ruled by Extravagant Expecta- board of the French philosophical of El Espectador, one of Colombia’s tions, Galerie Christine König, Wien review ‘La Règle du Jeu’ and the pilori leading newspapers, and another one (both 2008); One Size Fits All, Mary al. publication “Commentaire”. As a con- for the literay magazine Arcadia. Her Boone Gallery, New York (2007); and tributing editor of Flash Art Inter- articles and short fiction have been Coming Soon, Santa Monica Museum of national, he has co-authored a book on published in magazines and anthologies Art, Santa Monica (2006). Recent group curating with Elie During, Dominique in Colombia and abroad. exhibitions include 21st Century: Art in Gonzalez-Foerster and Hans-Ulrich the First Decade, Queensland Art Obrist. Donatien Grau is also a trained Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane; A r t i s t s specialist of Roman coins, on which he Bild für Bild, Film und zeitgenössische has written extensively in France, Alexander Apóstol (Barquisimeto, Kunst, Museum Ostwall im Dortmunder Austria, Switzerland and the United Venezuela, 1969). Lives and works U, Dortmund; The Last Newspaper, New States. between Madrid, Spain and Caracas, Museum, New York; Une forme pour Venezuela. He has had solo exhib- toute action, Le Printemps de Septem- Dieter Roelstraete was trained as a itions in, among others, MUSAC, León; bre, Musée les Abattoirs, Toulouse; philosopher at the University of Ghent Galeria Distrito Cu4tro, Madrid; and Yesterday Will Be Better, Aargauer and works as a curator at the Antwerp Arratia+Beer Gallery, Berlin (all 2010); Kunsthaus, Aarau;Chef d’oeuvre, Centre museum of contemporary art MuHKA. Solo Projects in ARCO 08, Galería Pompidou, Metz; Seconde Main, ARC, His curatorial projects there include Distrito Cu4tro, Madrid (2008); DRCLAS, Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, Emotion Pictures; Intertidal, a survey Harvard University, Cambridge (2007); Paris; Exhibition, exhibition / Mostra, show of contemporary art from Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibition mostra, Castello di Rivoli, Turin; and Vancouver; The Order of Things; Liam Center LACE, Los Angeles; Cisneros Repetition Island, Centre Georges Gillick and Lawrence Weiner: A Syntax Fontanals Art Foundation CIFO, Miami; Pompidou, Paris (all 2010). In 2005, of Dependency:, and the collaborative and Palau de La Virreina, Barcelona (all Bismuth won an Oscar for Best Original projects Academy: Learning from Art, 2006); and Sala Mendoza, Caracas Screenplay along with Michel Gondry

136 137 Biographies and Charlie Kaufman for the movie Biennale 4, Bucharest Biennale for Los Angeles (all 2009); Good Gangsters Agnieszka Kurant (Łódz,´ Poland, 1978). Maha Maamoun. Lives and works in he received the ‘Future of Europe Prize’ Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Contemporary Art; Zachary Formwalt, in Town, Taipei Fine Arts Museum, Taipei; Lives and works in Warsaw, Poland. She Cairo, Egypt. Selected exhibitions and from the Museum of Contemporary Art Rumiko Hagiwara, Ola Vasiljeva, and Into the Music, Kunstraum München, represented Poland at the Polish Pavil- biennials include Mapping Subjectivity: in Leipzig and in 2005 he won the 4th Fischli & Weiss (Zürich, Switzerland, BillyTown, The Hague (all 2010). München (both 2008). Hadley+Maxwell ion at Venice Biennale of Architecture Experimental Cinema in The Arab DESTE Prize from the DESTE Foun- since 1979). Peter Fischli & David Weiss Formwalt also participated in group studied at the European Graduate 2010 (with Aleksandra Wasilkowska). World, MoMA, New York; Live Cinema, dation for Contemporary Arts in Athens. (Zürich, Switzerland, 1952 & 1946). Live exhibitions at the Bank Gallery, Durban School in Switzerland (2004) and were Her works have been shown in art Philadelphia Museum of Art, and work in Zürich, Switzerland. (2008) and Gahlberg Gallery, Glen Ellyn recently artist-in-residence at YYZ in institutions including: Palais de Tokyo, Philadelphia; Ground Floor America, Lili Reynaud-Dewar (La Rochelle, France, Selected solo exhibitions include Peter (2004). Formwalt received his MFA Toronto (2010) and at the Künstler- Paris; Mamco, Geneva; Tate Modern, Den Frie Centre of Contemporary Art, 1975). Lives and works in Paris. Recent Fischli David Weiss, 21st Century from the North-western University in häuser Worpswede in Germany (2009). London; Yvon Lambert Gallery and Copenhagen; and Homeworks 5, Beirut solo exhibitions include Interpretation, Museum of Contemporary Art, Kana- Chicago (2003) and attended the Creative Time, New York; and Museum (all 2010); Past of the Coming Days, Kunsthalle Basel, Basel; Antiteater, zawa; Peter Fischli, David Weiss, Goetz Critical Studies programme at the Toril Johannessen (Harstad, Norway, of Modern Art Warsaw, Zacheta 9th Sharjah Biennial, Sharjah (2009); FRAC Champagne Ardennes, Reims Collection, Munich (both 2010); Peter Malmö Art Academy (2005). In 2008 – 1978). Lives and works in Bergen, National Gallery of Art, Centre for PhotoCairo 4, Contemporary Image (both 2010); Power Structures, Rituals Fischli / David Weiss. Are Animals 2009 he was an artist-in-residence at Norway. Selected solo exhibitions in- Contemporary Art Ujazdowski Castle, Collective – CiC, Cairo (2008); Global & Sexuality of the European Shorthand- People?, Museo Nacional Centro de the Rijksacademie in Amsterdam. clude Transcendental Physics, Bergen Warsaw. Kurant has participated in Cities, Tate Modern, London (2007); C Typists, Mary Mary, Glasgow; Black Arte Reina Sofia and Palacio de Cristal, Kunsthall NO.5, Bergen (2010); The Performa Biennial, New York (2009), on Cities, 10th Venice Biennale of Mariah, Centre d’art Parc Saint-Leger, Madrid; Objects on Pedestals, Sprüth Goldin + Senneby (since 2004). Live Generic Stone (w/Sidsel Meineche), Athens Biennale (2009), Bucharest Architecture, Venice; Snap Judgments, Pouges les Eaux (all 2009); IAO Magers, London; and Parts of a Film and work in Stockholm, Sweden. Recent Hordaland Art Centre, Bergen; Variable Biennale (2008) and Moscow Biennale International Center of Photography – Explorations in French psychedelia with a Rat and a Bear, Fondazione solo exhibitions include The Norden- Stars & In Search of Iceland Spar, (2007). She was commissioned to do ICP, New York (both 2006); and DAK’ART 1968, CAPC Musée d’art contemporain, Nicola Trussardi at Teatro Arsenale, skiöld Model: Act 1, Konsthall C, Oslo Fine Art Society, Oslo (both 2009); Frieze Projects at Frieze Art Fair, London 6, Dakar (2004). She was co-curator Bordeaux; LOVE = U.F.O, Lili Reynaud- Milan (all 2009). Selected group Stockholm; The Decapitation of Money, and Self Made, Kunstrom, Bergen (2008). She was an artist-in-residence ofPhotoCairo3, an International Visual Dewar, FRAC, Bordeaux; and The Race, exhibitions include Radical Conceptual, Kadist Art Foundation, Paris (both (2007). Recent group exhibitions include at Palais de Tokyo, Paris in 2004; ISCP, Arts festival in Cairo (2005), and Galleria Civica d’Arte Contemporanea di Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt; 2010); Headless. From the Public Space. About a dream, Kunsthalle Wien, New York in 2005; Konstfak, Stockholm assistant curator for Meeting Points 5, Siracusa, Montevergini, Sicily (all 2008). Production Site: The Artist’s Studio Record, Index, Stockholm (2009); and Vienna (2011); Smooth Structures, in 2007 and at the Paul Klee Center in an International Multidisciplinary Recent group exhibitions include Scene Inside-Out, Museum of Contemporary Goldin+Senneby: Headless, The Power SMART Project Space, Amsterdam; Bern in 2009. She was shortlisted for Contemporary Arts Festival (2007). Shifts, Bonniers Konsthall / The Royal Art, Chicago; The Original Copy: Photo- Plant, Toronto (2008). Recent group BGO1, Bergen Art Museum, Bergen; the Henkel Art Award (MUMOK, Vienna) Maamoun is a founding board member Dramatic Theater, Stockholm (2010); graphy of Sculpture, 1839 to Today, The exhibitions include Abstract Possible, Chris Cornish, Kristin Nordhøy and Toril in 2009. Kurant’s monograph Unknown of the Contemporary Image Collective Elles@centrepompidou, Centre Museum of Modern Art, New York; Museo Tamayo, Mexcio (2011); The Johannessen, Lautom Contemporary, Unknown was published by Sternberg (CiC), a space for contemporary arts and Pompidou, Paris; Je n’ étais pas qu’ une Analysis of Flight Data: Art of the 1980s: Moderna Exhibition, Moderna Museet, Oslo; The Line, CSA Space, Vancouver, Press in 2008. culture in Cairo. simple chimère, SBC gallery, Montréal; A Düsseldorf Perspective, K21 Kunst- Stockholm; Hydrarchy, Gasworks, (all 2010); Session 6 – Lecture, Kehrhaus-Abschied von Stabilen sammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, London; Uneven geographies, Notting- AmNudenDa, London; From Now On – Matts Leiderstam (Gothenburg, Sweden, Christodoulos Panayiotou (Limassol, Wänden, Westfälischer Kunstverein, Düsseldorf (all 2010);Waiting for Video: ham Contemporary, Nottingham; and New Nordic Photography, Hasselblad 1956). Lives and works in Stockholm, Cyprus, 1978). Lives and works in Berlin, Münster; Revolver, Coco Kunstverein, Works from the 1960s to Today, The The Headless Conference, New Museum, Center, Gothenburg (both 2009); and Sweden. Leiderstam has had solo Germany. Solo exhibitions include Vienna (all 2009); 5th Berlin Biennale, National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo; New York (all 2010); The Malady of Magiske Systemer, Tromsø Fine Art exhibitions at Turku Art Museum, Turku; Christodoulos Panayiotou, Museum of Berlin (2008); and Freak Show, Museum and Artist’s Choice: Vik Muniz, Rebus, Writing, MACBA, Barcelona; The Man Society, Tromsø (both 2008). Johannes- Grazer Kunstverein, Graz; Malmö Art Contemporary Art, Leipzig; Christo- of Contemporary Art, Lyon (2007). The Museum of Modern Art, New York behind the Curtain, Mission 17, San sen received her MFA in 2008 from the Museum; and Kunsthalle Düsseldorf doulos Panayiotou, Norrlands Operan – Reynaud-Dewar studied Ballet at the (both 2009). Fischli studied at the Francisco (both 2009); TINA, The Bergen National Academy of the Arts, (all 2010); Salon Museum of Contem- Vita Kuben (both 2011); Christodoulos Conservatoire National des Arts et Academia di Belle Arti in Urbino Drawing Room, London; and Reality Norway, and in 2011 she was a student porary Art, Belgrade; Wilfried Lentz, Panayiotou, Kunsthalle Zürich, Zürich; Métiers de La Rochelle and Public Law (1975 – 1976) and at the Academia di Effects, Henie Onstad Kunstsenter, at The Mountain School of Arts, Los Rotterdam (both 2008); Andréhn- Christodoulos Panayiotou, Cubitt, at the University of Paris 1 Panthéon Belle Arti in Bologna (1976 – 1977). Oslo (both 2008). They have been Angeles. In 2010, Johannessen was an Schiptjenko, Stockholm; Verkligheten, London (both 2010); The End, Künstler- Sorbonne, where she received her Weiss studied at the Kunstgewerbe- invited for several artist residencies, artist-in-residence at AIR Bergen-Berlin Umeå; and Badischer Kunstverein, haus Bethanien, Berlin; Never Land, masters in 1997. She then received schule in Zurich (1963 – 1964) and at including one at the Kadist Foundation in Berlin and at The Western Front in Karlsruhe (all 2007). Selected group Rodeo, Istanbul (both 2009); and Act I: a Masters degree in Fine Art from the the Kunstgewerbeschule in Basel in Paris (2010) and at the 28th Bienal Vancouver. exhibitions include Louvre in Heino – The Departure, 1m3, Lausanne (2008). Glasgow School of Art in 2003. (1964 – 1965). In 2010, Fischli & Weiss de São Paulo (2008). Photography from the Collection of Recent group exhibitions include I won the Wolfgang Hahn Prize. Vishal Jugdeo (Regina, Saskatchewan, Reyn van der Lugt, Museum de Fundatie, Know Something About Love, Parasol Tomás Saraceno (Tucumán, Argentina, Hadley + Maxwell (Canada, since 1997). Canada, 1979). Lives and works in Los Zwolle; Modernautställningen 2010, Unit (2011); Scene Shifts, Bonniers 1973). Lives and works in Frankfurt am Zachary Formwalt (Albany, Georgia, Live and work in Berlin, Germany. Angeles, California. Selected solo exhib- Moderna Museet, Stockholm; Canon Konsthall, Stockholm; Live Cinema / In Main, Germany. Saraceno has forth- USA, 1979). Lives and works in Recent solo exhibitions includeThe itions include Las Cienegas Projects, and Attitude, x_hibit – exhibition rooms the round, Philadelphia Museum of Art, coming solo exhibitions at Hamburger Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Recent Idiots, Every Letter in the Alphabet, Los Angeles (2010); Surplus Room, of the Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna; Philadelphia;Let’s Dance, MAC/VAL, Bahnhof, Berlin; and K21, Düsseldorf solo exhibitions include Zachary Vancouver; Improperties, SMART LA><ART, Los Angeles (2008); and 14 Vilnius Painting Triennial: False Vitry-sur-Seine; Trust, Seoul Media (both 2011). Recent solo exhibitions Formwalt, ar/ge kunst Galerie Museum, Projects Space, Amsterdam; and When Video About Sculpture, Western Front, Recognition, Contemporary Art Centre, Biennale, Seoul; Home Works 5, Ashkal include Tomás Saraceno: 14 billions, Bolzano (2011); Future Park – Repro- That Was This, YYZ, Toronto (all 2010); Vancouver (2005). Recent group exhib- Vilnius (all 2010); Konsthall SE, Konst- Alwan, Beirut; The Living Currency, Bonniers Konsthall, Stockholm; Cloud duction Direct from Nature, Casco, The Lemonade is Weak Like Your Soul/ itions include Elastic Frames, Trans- hall C, Hökarängen; The Mountain 6th Berlin Biennale – Hebbel am Ufer Cities Connectome, Tanya Bonakdar Utrecht (2010); and Zachary Formwalt – Die Limonade ist matt wie deine Seele, mission Gallery, Glasgow (2011); the Show, Wilfried Lentz, Rotterdam; Seen, (HAU1), Berlin; and Catastrophe, The Gallery, New York (both 2010); Tomás The form of practical memory, Kunst- Kunstverein Göttingen (2009);1+1-1, California Biennial, Orange County Unseen, Scene, Centré d’Art Passerelle, Quebec City Biennial, Quebec City Saraceno: Lighter than air, Walker Arts halle Basel (2009). Formwalt also had Jessica Bradley Art + Projects, Toronto Museum of Art, Newport Beach; Brest; and Romantikens kraft på (all 2010); Insiders, CAPC Musée d’art Center, Minneapolis; Biosphere, solo projects at the Elder Gallery, (2008). Recent group exhibitions include Quadruple-Consciousness, Vox Populi, spaning efter romantiken, Malmö Art contemporain, Bordeaux; Generosity is Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen Lincoln (2006); and the Rooseum Center It’s the End of the World (as We Know Philadelphia (both 2010). Jugdeo com- Museum, Malmö (all 2009). Leiderstam the New Political, Wysing Art Center, (both 2009 – 2010); On Clouds (Air-port- for Contemporary Art, Malmö (2005). It), La Kunsthalle Mulhouse; Manifes- pleted a BFA at Simon Fraser University holds a PhD in Fine Arts from the Malmö Wysing; Lyst, Lundme Overgarden city), Towada Art Center, Towada (per- Recent group exhibitions include Large tation Internationale d’art Québec: in Vancouver, an MFA at University of Art Academy. He was an artist-in- Institute of Contemporary Art, Copen- manent exhibition); and Cloudy Dunes, Abstractions, The Suburban, Oak Park Catastrophe!, Québec City; and Kurt, California in Los Angeles, and attended residence at the International Residence hagen;The Columns Held Us Up, Artist Fondazione Garrone, Genova (both Illinois (2011); “To the Arts, Citizens!”, Seattle Art Museum, Seattle (all 2010); the Skowhegan School of Sculpture at Couvents des Recollets in Paris Space, New York; and Convention, MoCA 2008). Saraceno has also participated Museu de Arte Contemporânea, The Malady of Writing, MACBA, and Painting in Maine (2003 – 2007). (2006), at Cove Park in Scotland (2005) Miami all 2009). Recently, he was an in the Perth International Arts Festival; Porto; Monumentalism, Stedelijk Barcelona; There is No Audience, He is currently a visiting professor at and at IASPIS’s Studio in Stockholm artist-in-residence at CAPACETE in Rio and The Devine Comedy, Harvard Museum Amsterdam, Amsterdam; Montehermoso Cultural Centre, Vitoria- California State University in Long (2004 – 2005). de Janeiro (2011), IASPIS Studio in Graduate School of Design, Cambridge, Neither From, Nor Towards…, Art Gasteiz; and Suddenly: Where We Live Beach, where he is teaching a video and Stockholm (2009) and at the Künstler- MA (both 2011). Recent group exhibi- Pavilion Zagreb, Zagreb; Bucharest Now, Pamona College Museum of Art, intermedia course. haus Bethanien in Berlin (2008). In 2011, tions include Between here and there:

138 The End of Money 139 Biographies Modern and Contemporary Art in the Museum of Contemporary Art, Porto; Permanent Collection, Miami Art Tanzimat, Augarten Contemporary, Museum (2010); Radical Nature: Art Vienna (both 2010); 11th Istanbul and Architecture for a Changing Planet, Bienali; After Architecture, Centre d’Art 1969 – 2009, Barbican Art Gallery, Santa Monica, Barcelona (2009); London (2009 – 2010); Wanås 2009: ISLANDS+GHETTOS, NGBK & Kunst- Footprints, Wanås Foundation, raum Kreuzberg / Bethanien, Berlin; Knislinge; Fari Mondi//Making Worlds, and Monument to transformation, City 53d Biennale de Venezia (all 2009); and Gallery Prague, Prague (all 2009); Psycho Buildings: Architecture by Selective Knowledge, ITYS, Institute for Artists, the Hayward Gallery, London Contemporary Art and Thought, Athens (2008). In 2009, he won the Calder Prize (2008); “A Number of Worlds Resembling from the Calder Foundation. Our Own”, SMART Project Space, Amsterdam (2007); 27th Bienal de São Tonel (Havana, Cuba, 1958). Lives and Paulo (2006); Behind Closed Doors, works in Vancouver, Canada. Solo Dundee Centre for Contemporary Arts exhibitions includeNothing to Learn, (2005); Manifesta 5, San Sebastian Galeria Habana, Havana (2011); Some (2004), and the 3rd Berlin Biennale Information is Now Available, Teck (2004). Gallery, Vancouver; Tonel, Miart 08, Milan International Art Fair of Modern and Lawrence Weiner (Bronx, New York, USA, Contemporary Art, Paolo Maria Deanesi 1942). Lives and works in New York, Gallery, Milan (both 2008); A Music of USA and Amsterdam, the Netherlands. The Body, Paolo Maria Deanesi Gallery, Recent solo exhibitions include Roveretto (2006); Tonel, Gallery Paule Lawrence Weiner: Dicht Bij, Stedelijk Anglim, San Francisco (2002); Some of Museum, Amsterdam; Lawrence Weiner: the Houses, Several Documents, the Dicht Bij, BAK, Utrecht; Lawrence Rocket, Detour 888, San Francisco; Weiner: As far as the eye can see, K21 andTonel: Lessons of Solitude, Art in Kunstsammlung im Ständehaus, General, New York (both 2001). Selected Düsseldorf; Lawrence Weiner, Konrad group exhibitions include Disturbing Fischer Galerie, Berlin (all 2008); Narratives: Cuevas, Toledo, and Tonel, Lawrence Weiner 1960 – 2007: As Far Jack S. Blanton Museum of Art, Texas; As The Eye Can See, Whitney Museum The Billboard Project (Seeing Peace), of American Art, New York (2007); Drift San Francisco International Arts (film project with John Baldessari and Festival, San Francisco (both 2008); Juliao Sarmento), Fundação Centro Face to face. The Daros Collections, Cultural de Belém, Lisbon (2004); and Zürich; Cuba Avant Garde: Arte Con- Bent and broken shafts of light, Kunst- temporáneo cubano de la Colección museum Wolfsburg, Wolfsburg (2001). Farber, Museo Harn, Gainesville and Recent group exhibitions includeWall John and Mable Ringling Museum of Rockets: Contemporary Artists and Art, Sarasota; and Killing Time, Exit Ed Ruscha, FLAG Art Foundation, New Art, New York (all 2007). Tonel gradu- York; Text / Messages: Books by Artists, ated in Art History from The University Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; and of Havana, Cuba in 1982. He was the The End, The Andy Warhol Museum, recipient of a John S. Guggenheim Pittsburgh (all 2009); Order. Desire. Fellowship for painting and installation Light: An exhibition of Contemporary art in 1995 and won the Cuban Artists Drawings, Irish Museum of Modern Art, Fund Award of the Cuban Artists Fund Dublin; Todas as Histórias, Fundação in New York in 2003. de Serralves – Museu de Arte Contem- porânea, Porto (both 2008). Weiner Vangelis Vlahos (Athens, Greece, 1971). received several awards including the Lives and works in Athens. Selected Skowhegan Medal for Painting / Con- solo exhibitions include Between Facts ceptual Art (1999), the Wolfgang Hahn and Politics, Prometeogallery di Ida Prize (1995), the John Simon Guggen- Pisani, Milan;What history do they re- heim Fellowship (1994) and the Arthur present? (together with Zbynek Kopcke Prize of the Arthur Kopcke Baladran), Blow de la Barra gallery, Memorial Fund (1991). London (both 2008); Direct Architecture, The Borgovico 33, Como; «1992», The Breeder gallery, Athens (both 2007); and at Display Galerie, Prague; and (to- gether with Hito Steyerl) at Els Hanappe Underground gallery, Athens (both 2004). Selected group shows include “To the Arts, Citizens!”, Serralves

140 The End of Money 141 Witte de With Staff C o l o p h o n a n d Thank you to all the artists: Alexander Acknowledgements Apóstol; Pierre Bismuth; Peter Fischli & Director David Weiss; Zachary Formwalt; Nicolaus Schafhausen This publication accompanies the Goldin+Senneby; Hadley+Maxwell; exhibition The End of Money Toril Johannessen; Vishal Jugdeo; Deputy Director (22 May – 7 August 2011), curated by Agnieszka Kurant; Matts Leiderstam; Paul van Gennip Juan A. Gaitán, assisted by Amira Gad, Maha Maamoun; Christodoulos at Witte de With, Center for Contem- Panayiotou; Lili Reynaud-Dewar; Tomás Business Coordinator porary Art (Rotterdam, The Netherlands). Saraceno; Tonel; Vangelis Vlahos; and Belinda Hak Lawrence Weiner. And to their galleries: Editor Andersen’s Contemporary, Copenhagen; Curators Juan A. Gaitán The Breeder, Athens; Distrito 4, Madrid; Juan A. Gaitán, Zoë Gray Eva Presenhuber, Zurich; Galeria Fortes Additional editing Vilaça, São Paulo; Jan Mot, Brussels; Junior Curator Amira Gad, Monika Szewczyk Konrad Fisher Galerie, Düsseldorf / Anne-Claire Schmitz Berlin; Lautom Contemporary, Oslo; Contributors Rodeo Gallery, Istanbul; Thomas Solomon Assistant Curator Pierre Bismuth, Dessislava Dimova, Gallery, Los Angeles; and Wilfried Lentz, Amira Gad Peter Fischli & David Weiss, Rotterdam. For Goldin+Senneby’s Donatien Grau, Hadley+Maxwell, The Discreet Charm, thank you to: Education project curator Dieter Roelstraete, Carolina Sanín, Tonel Pamela Carter (Playwright), Ismail Ertürk Renée Freriks, Karin Schipper (Senior Lecturer in Banking), Anna Translator Heymowska (Set Designer); and Hamadi Publications Sue Brownbridge Khemiri (Actor). And thank you to the Monika Szewczyk lender Nationalgalerie im Hamburger Production Bahnhof – Museum für Gegenwart – PR & Communication Amira Gad, Juan A. Gaitán Berlin. Thank you to our generous fun- Jessie Hocks ders: Office for Contemporary Art Proofreading Norway; Cypriot Ministry of Education Office Monika Szewczyk & Culture; Pro Helvetia: Swiss Arts Angélique Barendregt, Gerda Brust Council; The Canada Council for the Arts; Graphic Design and the Fonds BKVB. For the graphic Reception Kristin Metho design, thanks to Kristin Metho. For Hedwig Homoet, Emmelie Mijs, their contributions to the book, thanks Erwin Nederhoff, Erik Visser Images to: Dessislava Dimova, Donatien Grau, Bob Goedewaagen Dieter Roelstraete, and Carolina Sanín. Technicians For her translation of Carolina Sanín’s Gé Beckman, Line Kramer Publisher text, thanks to Sue Brownbridge. Witte de With, Center for For his photographs, thanks to Bob Installation Team Contemporary Art Rotterdam, Goedewaagen. A very special thank you Ties ten Bosch, Carlo van Driel, The Netherlands to Amira Gad, Fabian Schöneich, and Chris van Mulligen, Hans Tutert, to all the Witte de With staff, interns Ruben van der Velde ISBN and the installation team. 978-90-73362-98-7 Intern Mariska Oosterloo All rights reserved.

Curatorial assistants for © the artists, authors and Witte de Melanchotopia With, Rotterdam, 2011. Fabian Schöneich, Sam Sterckx Supported by Business Advisor Chris de Jong

Board of Directors Joost Schrijnen (chairman), Stef Fleischeuer (treasurer), Bart de Baere, Jack Bakker, Claire Beke, Nicoline van Harskamp, Karel Schampers, Yao-Hua Tan

Witte de With is supported by the city of Rotterdam and the Dutch Ministry of Culture.

142 143 Colophon and Acknowledgements

Contributions A p p e n d i x

Mark to Market Value, Inc. Exhibition Floorplan (1st of 9 text works spread through this publication) Exhibition Guide Tonel Works in the exhibition The Theory of Money Pierre Bismuth Transcripts from the exhibition “Where is the Money, Lebowski?” Making Ends Meet Provenance Matts Leiderstam Dieter Roelstraete 2026 Notes on Improperties Maha Maamoun Hadley+Maxwell Production and Technology Pierre Bismuth Five Acts of Money The Discreet Charm of Carolina Sanín Meta-Finance Goldin+Senneby Zachary Formwalt Statement on the work The End of Coins, the Triumph Grey Zones of Money, and the Disruptive Vangelis Vlahos Revolution of Art Donatien Grau Aircrafts on Ground Vangelis Vlahos Lili Reynaud-Dewar

The End Always Comes Twice Dessislava Dimova

Edited by Juan A. Gaitán