The Decapitation of Money

A two-room installation based on a lecture given by economic geographer Angus Cameron in the Marly forest outside Paris.

The entrance space reconstructs the lobby of BCEN-Eurobank, the ex-Soviet bank in Paris where the ”eurodollar” is said to have been invented in the 1950s. Through BCEN and a loophole in French law, the Soviet state managed to create a new kind of currency, named after the telex address of this bank “eurobank.” Eurodollars are dollars outside the control of the Federal Reserve. They break the historical connection between money and the sovereign state, something Goldin+Senneby’s spokesperson Angus Cameron refers to as a “decapitation of money.” With the eurodollar, money begins to flow beyond the control of states and territorial boundaries. Money creates its own headless territory: the “offshore.”

The back room features a map of the Marly Forest outside Paris and an audio recording of the lecture given by Cameron in this forest, where Georges Bataille’s secret society Acéphale is said to have convened around an oak tree struck by lightning in the late 1930’s. With their secretive and highly ritualized meetings, Acéphale appropriated the form of a fascist cell but with the aim of creating an anti-fascist mythology. Cameron gives his lecture on the “decapitation of money” while searching for the lightning-struck tree.

First exhibited at Kadist Art Foundation, Paris (2010) with Angus Cameron (economic geographer), Anna Heymowska (set designer), KD (fictional author), Kerwin Rolland (sound designer), Johan Hjerpe (graphic designer), Alexandre Guirkinger (photographer). Curator: Sandra Terdjman. In the collection of Kadist Art Foundation.

Selected reviews: