Close Up. Dinero
– 2015. Economies del desgast: Toni Giró – Jordi Mitjà.
ACVIC. Centre d’Art Contemporani. (exposició individual)
From a photography of the sign displaid in the facade of the headquarters of the Bank of Spain, where it can be read the word money decomposed into syllables and rows, with a crown at the top, a series of prints are produced. These images are treated with a dot pattern that increases gradually. As this dots get bigger, the definition of the original is getting lost; these dots become the size of one euro coin. The sequential arrangement of images along the wall produces a monotonous feeling since discovering the replacing of one of the dots by a coin in the last image. At the end of the line and below it, a screen shows a video of hands turning repeatedly an euro coin on a surface. It moves randomly within the fixed plane of the frame, while numbers on the upper corner of the screen counts the number of revolutions.
The operation of the present economic system is organized through the dematerialization of value for money. It no longer tries to represent financial amounts, provide equivalents trade, or even translate currency, equity and benefits. In fact, it works as a network of power based on the speed of information encrypted in its indecipherable code made from algorithms, which greased the speculative economy in financial markets, producing the so-called casino capitalism and devastating the social equity. In short, the economy becomes ideology as Althusser understood: the representation of an imaginary relationship with the real conditions of existence.