“What is robbing a bank compared to founding a bank?”
“Robbing a bank is an act of an amateur. True professionals found a bank.”
(Bertolt Brecht, The Threepenny Opera)
“They say he is dishonest, that he does not pay his debt. But what should we think of the one who took our interests, left his prices, and approved our prices?”
“Whoever set foot inside a bank never left it.”
(Rudolf Bićanić, How the People Live)
The phenomenon of money is as old as civilization itself and studying its nature and history drifts between two extremes: the liberal theory of economy which perceives money as a neutral means and sees its development from commodity to currency as a spontaneous process, as opposed to the conception of money as a complex system of social and political relations. At the beginning of the 20th century, Georg Simmel saw how money changes its social function and how, from being a means to accomplish a goal, it becomes the sole means, which is independent from the goal it tries to accomplish. Today’s electronic technologies question the term of money itself. According to some estimations, out of the total amount of US dollars in world circulation, 97% is virtual, while only 3% are paper bills.
Money is not a closed system and its meaning does not stem from money itself; its institutional position depends on society. Outside the community’s participation, money is meaningless, as Robinson Crusoe realized when he found coins on the shipwreck. If using money plays an important role in the structuring of different societies in very different cultural contexts and historical conditions, we can state that money is a universality whose nature we should seek outside of the physical characteristics of the means itself, somewhere else. In their book “Money as Sovereignty”, Michel Aglietta and Andre Orlean claim that “money does not exclusively belong to, not even primarily, to economic sciences,” because “its acceptance does not come down to a rational calculation of expenses and profit.” They suggest that the phenomenon of money and its usage should be observed as logically establishing a community and conserving its continuity, and of course money then “mobilizes beliefs and values via which one’s belonging to a community is confirmed.”
Elias Canetti analyzed the psychological effects of the German inflation after the First World War and concluded that, parallel with the weakening of the Deutche Mark, the belittling of citizens was developing. In the loss of value, personal and monetary units were intertwining. Let us briefly return to the quotes from the beginning. Brecht wrote his “Threepenny Opera” in 1928, a year before the Great Depression. Bićanić travelled the passive parts of Croatia in the direct aftermath of the crisis. Similarly, the question of understanding the complex field of finances and the functioning of the capitalistic system gains new momentum in the light of the current recession, spreading knowledge and spreading interests are now mandatory for those who are not familiar with the secrets of the financial sciences in the process of demystifying the system based on self-referentiality.
The exhibition Money etc. is the result of the collaboration of two multimedia artists, Isa Rosenberger and Kristina Leko. In their work so far, in their exhibitions, experimental and documentary video films or happenings, both tend to collaborate with different social groups and individuals. They are interested in the personal experiences, stories, competences and knowledge, points of view – and the ways they mix with the historical and political situation. In order to thematize the relations, intertwinings, points of view, perspectives, projections and prejudices between the (former) East and (former) West, in their joint Zagreb project they decide on the topic of banking, in light of the transitional process from a once socialistic into a capitalistic society. The domination of Austrian banks in Croatia and the effects on both Croatian and Austrian society, as the example of the so-called transitional processes in post-socialistic countries, is the starting point of their artistic research. On the other side of economic considerations, on the productive basis of art as a “specific stage of images”, they try to find an art form for this complex and politically charged question.
While searching for images which could represent the abstract and immaterial economic-political interlocking and the negative spirals, in her work Danse Macabre, Rehearsal (based on the ballet by Kurt Jooss “The Green Table”) Isa Rosenberger adopts the motive of the dance Death, as a kind of morbid waltz, an image of destructive flows, turns and intertwinings: a dark motive that is intermitted with the aesthetic dimension of the dance. The work Danse Macabre, Rehearsal should be interpreted as a homage to the ballet of the German choreographer Kurt Joossa “The Green Table” that was first performed in 1932 in Paris. In this expressionistic piece conceived as a danse macabre in eight images, Joos translated the classical motive of late medieval art into his contemporary setting and linked it to motives that reflect his experiences from the times of the Weimar Republic, the first fascistic tendencies, the economic crisis, etc. Isa Rosenberger translates this first political ballet into contemporariness, but also into a proper genre and she interweaves it with (her own) experiences and perspectives on the actual political and economic conditions. From the eight images, she takes two: the people in power that are negotiating at the table and the solo dance of death, which she supplements with documentary materials: a newspaper article from one of Austria’s papers from 2009 which dully describe the profit of Austrian banks in Eastern Europe, which clearly illustrates how much they benefit from this arrangement, and she also gives excerpts from an interview with a dancer from Chile, Amanda Piña; while she is in make-up, she tells how she met a dancer from Kurt Jooss’ troupe, and who danced in the first staging of “The Green Table”. This dancer is also the founder of the school that teaches Kurt Jooss’ dance technique, and this school is important for the socialistic anti-Pinochet movement in Chile. The school is called Espiral, i.e. spiral. In the video, these two narrative levels are connected with the motive of a spiral or circulation: on the one hand, the circulation of capital and profit of Austrian banks, on the other the spirals of the dance. The part of the documentation, the interviews she carried out in Zagreb in front of the building of the Croatian National Bank in June, 2009 goes beyond of the video itself. These “chorus” voices can be read on the pamphlets that can be found in front of the projection.
In the performance How the People Live, II which was performed in Park Maksimir, Kristina Leko reads excerpts from Rudolf Bićanić’s book from 1936 by with the same title, a pioneering work of anthological value from the field of rural sociology. The artist made the first performance under this title in 2008 in Park Tikveš in Baranja; this time she chose excerpts that refer to banking and the farmers’ running into debt. Bićanić wrote the book during the great agrarian crisis of the 1930’s, when, with the sudden arrival of capitalism to the countryside and the collapse of cooperative farms, the problems regarding farmers’ running into debt culminate. Rural population became dependant on money. The misconception that the rural population is closed in the natural economy where it can survive without trade and market is disabused. Bićanić is not blinded by old illusions and is well aware that the traditional way of life is not an alternative to the capitalistic social project. Insofar he stresses the political impotence of the rural population and argues that they should be introduced to the basics and laws of economy and finance, while his contemporaries accuse Western capitalism and individualism having disastrous effects on the countryside.
Vesna Vuković
BIOGRAPHIES:
In her works, Austrian artist Isa Rosenberger explores the political upheavals and related social and economic consequences. By juxtaposing subjective observances and everyday biographies with canonized representations of history, Isa Rosenberger questions the construction of reality and the power of images that is connected with it. By unveiling inner, mental images and public images constructed by the media, she aims at creating an alternative reading of the established past and present, and at opening the possibility to reinterpret and rethink the already established stories. The artist documents the places and conversations via photography and video, and then mixes them with fictional contents and stagings.
Isa Rosenberger, born 1969 in Salzburg, studied at the Academy of Applied Arts in Vienna and at the Jan van Eyck Akademie in Maastricht. She lives and works in Vienna.
Kristina Leko, born 1966, lives and works in Zagreb and Köln. After graduating from the Academy of Fine Arts, she studied Indology and philosophy at the University in Zagreb, and finished her post-graduate studies at the Univesität der Künste Berlin. She works with video, photography, installations, text; social interaction is the focus of her art practice that often takes place in public space. She has realised several extensive community projects in collaboration with socially deprived groups from different countries (immigrants, small rural businesses, senior citizens, the unemployed…).
curator: Vesna Vuković
production: [BLOK] – Local Base for Refreshment of Culture
the exhibition is supported by: Zagreb City Office for Culture, Bundesministerium für Unterricht, Kunst und Kultur Österreichs
activities of the organization [BLOK] is supported by the National Foundation for Civil Society Development
