Money Laundering

Address

William Wains Gade 11,
København

Money Laundering

Description

Money secures domination. Money is anonymous and abstract. Historically, this link between power and quantifiability has changed the world. Money can be accumulated infinitely, unlike commodities or labor services. Money thus made way for injustice on a new scale and continues to secure it today. Anthropologist David Graeber points out that money is trivialised. He shows that the common narrative of the emergence of money as a simplification of barter falls far short. He demonstrates that the invention of money is essentially about financing wars. In global capital flows, money symbolically carries every previous transaction. It bears traces of wars, arms exports and slavery. All who use money are implicated – even those who benefit only indirectly from global transactions, in the form of art grants and salaries. No one can locate themselves outside of global connections, even if the comfort of living in a rich country obscures those connections. Art is a money-laundering machine: money with a long transaction history is fed into the art system and may come out cleaner. Even in a comparatively well-functioning democracy, arms exports to war zones and art coexist – with the latter providing basic hygiene. In the project Money Laundering, the artists expose their own entanglement in global capital flows, address their own participation in the perpetuation of global injustice. The project is a symbolic act, 98% desperation and 2% wit. Washing attempts to strip money of its anonymity and remove the patina of oblivion. Depending on the occasion, new forms and formats are always sought. The first realization of this idea took place in 2019 in Berlin as a contemporary music theater piece. The ensemble MaNN AUS OBST #5 elaborated an evening in which elements of sound installation, improvised music and post-dramatic theater were assembled into a plaintive-comic-absurd wash factory. Maja and Anton continued that work as Team DETOX and turned Money Laundering into a long-term project. During 2023/24 they carried out 14 consecutive monthly washing cycles in different formats: video snippet, intervention in public space, improvised music concert, online lecture, text publication, basement concert, flash mob, mixed-form performance (movement and sound), side-show to a new music concert, activism in front of a shopping mall, building and performing with networked instrumental setups. The project currently exists as an on-demand adaptable washing service. At MINU_festival_for_expanded_music we are laundering 30000 DKK. This approximately amounts to 3% of the festival funding, to 100% of our own fee and to 20000% of the price of one festival pass.