1MB = 10GR
You think of it as a medium of exchange, whereas it is above all a distributor of your agency – thanks to it you are capable of more or of less. 99% of mankind is capable of little, even though new forms of money keep being reinvented. In most cases the creativity results from a hope to increase the profits of the remaining 1%, which is capable of a lot and obliged to do nothing. Cryptocurrencies have recently been considered a new hope for a fairer distribution of agency, although their most popular representative – bitcoin – is already being colonized by the most powerful players. In order to get by in the precarious reality of the art world, the artist Cyanne van den Houten devised her own system of exchange. It is regulated by a single, unchangeable principle of transferring reality to virtuality, according to which 10 grams of food equals one megabyte of data. Thanks to it the artist exchanged food offered by her friends for digital graphic works she made. If the food she consumed weighed 200 grams, the exchange partner received an image packed in 20 megabytes. Inventing agency instead of increasing profit.
Project made for Walls & Words 'What Will be — What Will Come' duo exhibition and artist talk (with Jordy van den Nieuwendijk) (2014) at Kapitaal, Utrecht. For two weeks, the work of two artists will be shown on two walls.
Part of POLICY OF DISAPPEARANCE
9 February – 24 March 2018
Studio BWA Wrocław gallery
︎2013, 2019︎