Twitter
Advertisement

Currency bouquet sans value: Video art installation 'History Zero' on accumulation of money

Greek artist Stefanos Tsivopoulos’ exhibition takes a critical look at monetary systems, says Ornella D’Souza

Latest News
article-main
A still from Stefanos Tsivopoulos’s film showing an origami floral bouquet made from 500 Euro notes
FacebookTwitterWhatsappLinkedin

An elderly woman’s obsession with folding 500 euro notes into origami flowers remains committed to memory long after you’ve watched History Zero, a video-and-archive installation by Greek artist and filmmaker Stefanos Tsivopoulos.

Despite her dementia, she remembers to replace an old bunch with the fresh ones she's made. Her act sets off a karmic chain reaction as two individuals hurriedly discard existing possessions when they chance upon objects of greater value. A scrap metal scavenger forgets the junk he’d gathered after rummaging through countless garbage bags upon discovering the 'money' bouquet in a bin. An artist instantly forgets his passion of photographing mundane objects when he spots the scavenger's abandoned trolley and reacts as if he has struck gold. The 33-minute, three-part film uses class divide in Athens to discern how money is a metaphor for value.

Commissioned for the 2013 Venice Biennale, History Zero comes to India at the 'doll house' of exhibition spaces — the tiny box that is the Mumbai Art Room under the curatorship of Abhijan Gupta. “The film is about the hoarding of value,” says Gupta. “Money is supposed to be about economies moving, but what really happens is accumulation. If we want to restructure our society, we’ve to start from equity,” he says, hinting at India’s demonetisation saga.  

Alongside Tsivopoulos' haunting, seemingly apocalyptic, video art, viewers can engage with a fascinating archive of alternative currency systems from across the world: etched beer cans, cowrie shells, eggs, coins carved out from wood, and traditional money systems such as Hobo Nickels (carving faces behind coins to catapult their value during the Great Depression), Angola’s use of Heineken beer cans as currency in the 1980s,  Rolling Jubilee, which emerged from the Occupy Wall Street movement, to combat student debts and chit funds in India that help participants cut debts with each person putting a fixed amount of money in a pot and taking it home by turn. 

Gupta has also included in History Zero an exhibit by California start-up Economic Space Agency Collective (ECSA) titled, The Inter-Species Token Game. “Everybody can participate in this game-like environment,” he says. “For instance, if someone says they want to take on the great financial giants, they’d be able to do it in the game in a manner whereby everyone feels free to retake control over systems that are otherwise beyond their control.”

(History Zero is on view at Mumbai Art Room in Colaba  until September 2)

Find your daily dose of news & explainers in your WhatsApp. Stay updated, Stay informed-  Follow DNA on WhatsApp.
Advertisement

Live tv

Advertisement
Advertisement