Money

Through its unique power to transform the qualitative into the quantitative, money reduces all things to relative equality in the vortex of its emptiness. It unites and fragments. Marx began his investigation into economics by confronting this magical ability to convert every quality into a quantitatively measurable unit. "Money, then, appears as this distorting power both against the individual and against the bonds of society....Since money, as the existing and active concept of value, confounds and confuses all things, it is the general confounding and confusing of all things – the world upside-down – the confounding and confusing of all natural and human qualities." Money is an ontological boundary, with limits that encompass the topography of being. Following Marx's diagnosis, this assemblage reflects upon a perception confounded and confused, fragmented, distorted, dulled and effaced by aching and impossible demands. This is a map of the world turned inside out.

Sources: Karl Marx, “The Power of Money in Bourgeois Society,” in The Marx-Engels Reader, 2nd Edition (Norton, 1978). See also Georg Simmel, The Philosophy of Money (Routledge, 1978).

July 2024

Mixed materials: cyanotype, wood, silver gelatin paper, images from large format negatives.

20"x20"x2.5"