In June 2010, at the invitation of Szene Salzburg, Peter Stamer and Daniel Aschwanden carried out two Austrian Paths of Money. After tracing the journey of a 10-euro note, they turned to a 5-euro banknote to get to know the people who used it. One of them was Lukas.
If you accompany a banknote, you want to make sure it ends up in good hands. But who counts as a ‘good’ holder? Someone with a story to tell? Someone who travels and can take us along? Someone who turns the note over and over in their hands until they know what to do with it?
If that’s the case, then Lukas was the perfect banknote holder. He led us through Salzburg to places we never would have discovered on our own. He took us to a hip-hop contest and into its backstage area, where we met contestants from all over the world. He eventually brought us to his family in Stuttgart, opening the door to his private sphere—one that turned out to be quite different from what we had expected. And finally, he took us along when he had to give a statement to the police in his hometown, having witnessed a crime.
All the while, he kept turning the banknote over in his hands, making sure we would end up in the ‘right’ hands. But then the path took another turn …