PRODUCTION! PRODUCTION! PRODUCTION! Τhe Design of Debt
The installation work with the title PRODUCTION! PRODUCTION! PRODUCTION! Τhe Design of Debt (2013) deals with the contemporary condition of the undocking of money from material labor and from production. The work transforms the real actors that are artistically and economically involved in the project «Sculptural Narration» into transacting parties and interconnects them within a partly fictitious, partly real economical construction of a chain of transactions. Oscillating between reality and fiction, the work questions the notion of sovereignty and initiates a different connection between economy and art: the production of money out of nothing leads to the production of debt which ceaselessly circulates among the parties of transaction. The debt ends nowhere because nobody wants to redeem it.
THE PLOT:
The Genealogy of the 50 Bolts of Fabric as Debt or the New Artistic Medium Called Debt. MATERIAL: 50 BOLTS OF FABRIC with code numbers: 10C2249-1 to 10C2259-50: According to a formal financial contract between the greek clothing export company T.K.S.A and artist V.S. (vs.images), 50 bolts of fabric were exported to the city of Munich as part of the exhibition „SCULPTURAL NARRATIONS”. In this manner, the bolts referred to, leave the storeroom of the greek clothing export company T.K.S.A in Thessaloniki, together with the realm of conventional economic production and are entered into the field of artistic conceptualisation and the production and distribution of artworks.
During the period between September 2007 and December 2008, 50 bolts of fabric with the above codes were produced in a suburb of Istanbul, at the textile factory by the name of L.M.S.A.
19 February 2009: According to a formal financial contract between the turkish textile factory L.M.S.A. and the greek clothing export company T.K.S.A. the 50 bolts were exported from a suburb of Istanbul to a suburb of Thessaloniki.
12 November 2011: After partial use for the production needs of the greek clothing export company T.K.S.A, the 50 fabric bolts in question (wholly or in part) were transferred to the storerooms of the greek clothing export company, thus leaving the casual street wear production circle.
15 December 2012: According to a formal financial contract between the greek clothing export company T.K.S.A and artist V.S. (vs.images), 50 bolts of fabric were exported to the city of Munich as part of the exhibition „SCULPTURAL NARRATIONS”. In this manner, the bolts referred to, leave the storeroom of the greek clothing export company T.K.S.A in Thessaloniki, together with the realm of conventional economic production and are entered into the field of artistic conceptualisation and the production and distribution of artworks.
25 January 2013: Insofar as the artist V.S. (vs.images) was not paid by the artistic organisation which invited her to the exhibition titled „SCULPTURAL NARRATIONS” she was not in turn able to pay the greek clothing export company T.K.S.A for the material of the 50 bolts of fabric.
The debt thus created is simultaneously financial and artistic (: conceptual). To summarise the undertaking: the debt itself is the work of art.
The installation «PRODUCTION! PRODUCTION! PRODUCTION! Τhe Design of Debt» proposes a new notion of the value of the art work: „From now on the work of art should be evaluated on the basis of the debt it produces“.
Next, the artist V.S. (vs. images) issued Art Bonds aiming at the payment of the debt that had been produced. The work of art, which is identified with the debt, functions potentially as a guarantee of profit for the buyer of the Art Bond. Every work of art is placed by definition on a financial and conceptual horizon of open-endedness. That is its promise.
The work is accompanied by the sound piece entitled "The Value of Art Work":
https://soundcloud.com/user-677522170/production-production-production-the-design-of-debt-2013/s-ZpbMOYsCeQW