Showing posts with label art. Show all posts
Showing posts with label art. Show all posts

Wednesday, October 20, 2010

The Value of Money : One Man's Grapefruit, Another Man's Bread

"I’m interested in the way photography is used to deceive. Millions, if not billions of advertising dollars are spent annually photographing food and obfuscating reality.  Fast food conglomerates are certainly the worst culprits, but everywhere we see glamorized versions of what we eat. 

Food is clearly a potent symbol of wealth, power, health, and globalization for the 21st Century.  Its value is determined by the price of oil, its transnational transport contributes to Global Warming, its ingredients entice America into obesity, and its production processes animals into floss and mush.

The photographs in this project attempt to strip back the artifice; to depict food items as they were sold, (minus packaging,) without styling, retouching, or artificial lighting.  Each image represents a dollar’s worth of food purchased from various markets in New Mexico.  The subjects exist as equivalent amounts of commodity, and nothing more.  The resulting images allow for a meditation on the power and seductive nature of the photographic medium itself."

View more images by Jonathan Blaustein here.

Posted via email from Dollar ReDe$ign Project

Wednesday, November 25, 2009

Fair Trade : The Globo Dollar : Nicky Enright

The Globo Dollar is "a fusion of the legal tender of over twenty five countries including the US Dollar, and evokes a vision of world unity and progress, while simultaneously suggesting the ever-increasing reach of corporate globalization.

In the globalized world, 'developed' countries exploit 'developing' countries by taking advantage of their drastically unequal economies, which the former themselves help to create. This exploitation is most evident in the fact that the incomes of people in the 'developing' world are a fraction of what their time and labor would be worth in the 'developed' world. 

Corporations have also outpaced governments in terms of going global, and also don't abide by any one nation’s rules. Consequently, these conglomerates have been influencing governments and helping create a situation where money is over-valued on their home turf and under-valued everywhere else. This state of affairs results in the creation of a vast and enduring global underclass that can barely make a living, regardless of how hard they work or how much money they manage to save.

The Globo Dollar serves as both an illustration of this predicament and as an alternative.  

Like the American Dollar, the Globo represents a currency backed only by power. The US Dollar also happens to be the official currency of various nations and it's remarkable to note that one Dollar in the US is worth more than that same Dollar in Ecuador, for instance. And because there are so many currencies in the world, purchasing power is not actually linked to the physical substance of money. As an alternative, the Globo evokes the unifying power of the Euro and also confronts exploitation by making the adoption of an international minimum wage theoretically possible. 

Currently the Globo exists as a large framed print and as actual bills which are distributed amongst the real-world economy, constantly sparking disbelief and intense debate. This work also underscores the act of 'making money' - not only in the sense of earnings, but also in the sense of a nations official currency. It summons up the abstraction that underlies all money, and emphasizes the need to transform the stark inequalities of a globalized labor force."

Artist Nicky Enright was born in Ecuador and currently lives in New York. The Globo Dollar was included in the Exit Art exhibition, 'America for Sale' – http://www.exitart.org/site/pub/exhibition_programs/SEA/america_for_sale.html

Posted via email from Dollar ReDe$ign Project

Friday, November 13, 2009

Under Valued Over Priced : People vs Pop Art

Andy Warhol's 1962 painting '200 One Dollar Bills' was recently sold at auction for  $43.7 million. That's about $218,500 per Dollar bill. Now lets put that along side our current national debt of $11.9 trillion and counting, which is equal to a value of $110,500 per citizen. Our current GDP is approx $12.3 trillion, or $88,788 per citizen. In other words we’re all contributing about $89,000 each towards paying off that national debt. Consequently the actual value of the Dollar we have in our pocket is worth about 80 cents. Although I’m not a mathematician.

 

Posted via web from Dollar ReDe$ign Project

Friday, October 30, 2009

Silly $issy Dollar : Andy Hillman : SHOWstudio

Money for Old Rope. We stumbled upon yet another fine Dollar sculpture tucked away in the corner of SHOWstudio's online shop. Created for a Peter Jensen 2006 catwalk show by artist Andy Hillman, the '$issy' piece actually pays homage to Sissy Spacek (apparently) but clearly the deeper meaning is a comment on the Dollar's global status, clearly! So if you're interested in buying this typographic beauty – a snip at $25,000 – follow this link ... http://tinyurl.com/yarjo5e

Posted via web from Dollar ReDe$ign Project

Martial Art : Creating Something from Nothing : Won Park ­ 'the Money Folder'

Let's face it, the US Dollar is heading towards an early retirement especially if the BRIC nations have their way (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BRIC). Thank God for the grand master of Origami, Won Park. Also known as 'the money folder,' Park seems to stand alone in his belief that the US currency still has some value – at least as an art material. By simply folding and bending Dollar bills, Park creates amazing life-like 3-d Origami sculptures of 'everyday' objects including cameras, butterflies, Chinese dragons, space ships and angry bears – literally anything that takes his fancy it seems. However, more recently Park has started working with a new medium, the Euro – obviously he's come to the realization that the Dollar's demise is imminent. You can view more of Park's work here ... http://tinyurl.com/mlpv56

Posted via email from Dollar ReDe$ign Project