#311 Swipe 23.11.20

64x84 cm | Filler, oak frame

Each line in this work represents a transaction I made with my Visa card on a randomly selected day. Their placement on the surface corresponds to a 24-hour interval starting on the left and ending to the right. I made the lines by physically swiping my Visa card through the wet filler.

An economic transaction is evidence of an interaction between two subjects. It is thus a transcendental act that disrupts the subject's primordial alienation. In its final consequence, money represents human work. Work entails a certain physical effort over time, so despite its strictly abstract nature, capital has, in a way a more concrete material representation than language in general. I can say what I want, but speaking the language of money requires something more.

In modern times, art has a strong connection to collecting. A collector's item breaks to some extent with the economic logic. Its value to the collector is not necessarily directly linked to either its use-value or its exchange value. It is also about ownership for the sake of owning. In this way, collecting is parallel to artistic production. To some extent, it means to create for the sake of the creation itself, an act that also breaks with economic logic. Thus both can potentially have a subversive function within a capitalist system.