How and through whose hands do they circulate? What is the face value of money in different countries, particularly in times of social and financial crises; of populist and economic nationalism; of pandemics? What does happiness, money and fortune mean? What is the actualized weight of paper money?
Since early spring 2022, Peter Stamer and Ilya Noé have been accompanying low denomination banknotes on their way through different countries, and through them becoming acquainted with the people making use of that money. Every time the bills change hands, the artists are transferred to the new owner as well.
Equipped with video cameras and recording devices we will not only “follow the money” but also the life threads of those in temporary possession of it. If/when a holder decides to spend the bill, Stamer and Noé will be transferred along with them, thus making money function like a chance operator driving them towards strangers and through uncharted territories. “Following the money” thus becomes an “econographic” game with the potential to render micro-economies and their stories visible, weaving the artists together with people and their dreams and fears, wishes and hopes.
This chase takes up from where Peter and his then collaborator Daniel Aschwanden left off more than ten years earlier when they followed two 10 and 20 yuan bills across China for four weeks and 4,000 km. It was 2009 and the world then was witnessing the beginning of a global economic crisis that is still in full swing and that has been dragging entire economies down since. A decade or so later, confronted with a radically different economic macrocosm —topped with the mainstreaming of rightwing extremism and the effects of a global pandemic—, it seemed like a propitious time to take a new look into micro- economies, and more specifically, at the “alter-economies” moving in and through realities such as Mexico’s and Albania’s — and more…
Gefördert durch die Beauftragte der Bundesregierung für Kultur und Medien im Programm NEUSTART KULTUR, Hilfsprogramm DIS-TANZEN des Dachverband Tanz Deutschland.
Funded by the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and Media within the framework of the initiative NEUSTART KULTUR, aid programm DIS-TANZEN by the Dachverband Tanz Deutschland
