CAPITAL PRESENTS * : CAPITAL -A Critique of Political Economy
Donation, Transfers of Capital to
the Federal Ministry of Finance, Germany,
2009 - ca. 2052
Since May 31, 2009, Lahr has transferred 1 cent daily to the German Federal Ministry of Finance, thus helping to counter the growing mountain of debt. In the field »reason for payment«, she always writes 108 characters from "Capital: A Critique of Political Economy" by Marx. In this way, bit by bit, the entire text of the book will be transferred into the state's central account via online banking. The transmission of the roughly 15,709 cents and 1,696,500 characters will take about 43 years. The value increase of the capital investment is not even included, nor are the required labor and lifetime or the added value through cultural and symbolic capital calculated into this. If the national debt could be frozen at the amount of 1,746,599,197,210 Euro (May 31, 2009), Lahr´s donation, due to the exponential effects of interest and compound interest, could pay this debt off within 300 years.
"CAPITAL", which inscribes itself irrevocably into accounts and archives, is a donation to the entire people, entered into the state budget of the FRG, administered by the currently elected representatives, safely stored at the Bundesbank. Each of the money transfers is documented per screenshot, printed out once, signed, and given away to individual citizens standing for the population as a whole. In "over-subscriptions" on translucent paper, Lahr crosses out character by character and thus produce an unreadable notation of "Capital", consisting of counting marks and numerals.
During Transmediale.11 Festival for Art and Digital Culture Berlin, February 2011, the artist will temporarily install her work station in the House of World Cultures, exposing bureaucratic structures and delivering an illustrative insight into the cultivation of capital:
CAPITAL PRESENTS * : THE MAKING OF CAPITAL.
* The German title MACHT GESCHENKE implies "MAKE A GIFT!", "GIFTS OF POWER" as well as "POWERFUL GIFTS"
Links : CHRISTIN LAHR
http://www.macht-geschenke.de
No comments:
Post a Comment