domaki

“It can be bizarre seeing a work of art by somebody who doesn’t come from your own country, but who seems to have interpreted the feelings and hopes you harbour for your nation in a much better way than you would have done. Yet, as much as puzzling as this may seem, this is perfectly understandable in a world in which communication between people and nations have created a major economic, political, and cultural fluidity and cross-cultural exchange.”

The average person takes about 150 million steps in a lifetime. What if we could turn all that movement into energy?

Entitled “History Zero”, Tsivopoulos’ project features archival material about different currencies - from barter, beer or shell money to microfinance, mobile money and bitcoins. A film in three parts tackles the theme of money and currency value giving it an ironic twist: an elderly art collector suffering from Alzheimer’s disease spends her time making origami flowers with Euro banknotes; a young immigrant from Africa collects scrap metal with a supermarket trolley, while an artist randomly walks around Athens taking pictures on his iPad. The art collector’s origami flowers assume a new value when the young immigrant surprisingly finds them in a rubbish bin, while his “gold”, that is the supermarket trolley full of scrap metal, becomes an inspiring treasure in the hands of the visionary artist.

Could use for a another discussion of the medium as the message and all that…