TIMEMONEY Minue | ATHENS 2007

About This Project

Multi-level, individually designed, participatory project of an artistic research on the concept of artistic time, which took the form of performative actions in the public space, video visual recordings, and photographs, as well as a spatial installation of 10,000 time banknotes stacked on a table level, and sometimes collected inside a suitcase. Each time-bill is 14 cm X 8 cm. in size, printed digitally on plain paper. The actions took place outside the Bank of Greece in an selforganized, indipendent art-action, and in the Old Market of Kypseli, in an activist action of the Reconstruction Community occupation and art exhibit. The work was also presented in the project Site/Thesis in the ProTaseis exhibition curated by Elpida Karaba, Anne-Lor Oberson and Sotirios Bachtzizis at the festival Action Field Kodra #6 in Thessalonica in September 2006. Finally, the Timenotes were also given away in the book “Bunk Robbery” which was published by the For a Libertarian Culture publishing house, in Athens 2010-11.

Keywords: transcendence, postfordism, community, interaction, artistic identity, appearance, presence

The project was initiated with purpose the timenotes Minue to be given away and not exchanged. Influenced by the special offer of “free time” offered by mobile telephony companies, Ι create a new, imaginary system to measure everyday’s leisure time. I imprint it in euro-like “time-money”. The project constitutes a comment on the connection between the artist’s time that (traditionally) is not included in the shared production time of the shared paid work, and the work of art. The time “bought” with the Minues is working time for the individual itself, but is not intended to produce some commodity for consumption, nor is it intended for capital recycling. The project is exhibited in various types of actions in public space, where Minues are exchanged by the receivers of the transaction themselves (conversation with the artist) in their own actions.