‘1981-1987’ (2009) by Ištvan Išt Huzjan.
A book consisting of seven photographs, all taken on the 1st of june (the artist’s birthdate) between 1981 and 1987. By opening a page, a sound mechanism is triggered.
The sound files coincide with the dates of the photographs, playing number-one hit songs from that date.
Diana Duta, ‘Keeping time’ (2010)
Diana Duta translated the lyrics of Romanian pop-songs from her birthyear to phonetic English. These lyrics were sung by her (non-Romanian) friends and recorded to tape with Duta playing drums in the background. During the exhibition ‘If you say something, see something’ at Tent., Rotterdam, she asked employees of the space to wear T-shirts she had silkscreened with the lyrics.
Check the edit she made of the recordings here.
‘The world won’t listen’ (2005) by Phil Collins.
Phil Collins asked fans in Colombia, Turkey and Indonesia to karaoke to songs of The Smiths. Working with local musicians, he re-recorded the backing tracks of the entire album. The karaoke singers are placed in front of photographs of beautiful landscapes.
‘Queen’ (2005)
and ‘King’ (2005) by Candice Breitz.
Breitz gathered fans of Madonna and Michael Jackson by posting advertisements in newspapers and fan websites. They were asked to sing and dance their way through a key album. This was recorded and shown simultaneously.
Rafal Bujnowski, ‘Visa’ (2004)
Preparing for a studio stay in New York, Bujnowski painted a photo-realistic self-portrait in black and white, had it photographed and enclosed the picture as his official photo in the U.S.A. visa application form. The consulate workers failed to notice the manipulation and, eventually, the artist received a passport with a replica of his own painting. Using this document Rafal has crossed the U.S. border, the project was supplemented by the fact that the artist has attended a pilot’s course, which featured a training flight over Manhattan – this event was recorded by Bujnowski as a video, part of which is shown below.
‘Flying lessons’ (2004)
Thank you, Willum!
‘Portrait of a man with a size of 181 cm.’ (2009)
‘One Million Euro’ (2008) by Roman Pfeffer.
2000 pieces of 500 Euro banknotes separated in paper and ink.
K Foundation, ‘K Foundation burn a million Quid’ (1994)
On the 23rd August 1994, in a boathouse on the Scottish island of Jura, Bill Drummond and Jimmy Cauty, formerly known as the most succesful British 90s pop group the KLF (which stands for Kopyright Liberation Front and also known as The Justified Ancients of Mu Mu, The Timelords and other names), then known as the K Foundation, incinerated £1,000,000 in cash. This money represented the bulk of the K Foundation’s funds, earned as the KLF.
The burning was witnessed by an old friend of Drummond’s, freelance journalist Jim Reid, who subsequently wrote an article about the ceremony for The Observer. It was filmed on Super 8 by their friend Gimpo. Reid admitted to first feeling shock and guilt about the burning, which quickly turned to boredom. The money took well over an hour to burn as Drummond and Cauty fed £50 notes into the fire. Drummond later said that only about £900,000 of the money was actually burnt – the rest flew straight up the chimney. The press reported that an islander handed £1,500 into the police; the money had not been claimed and would be returned to the finder.
Click here for Reid’s article on the burning and its aftermath.
‘The fountain of prosperity’ (2007) by Michael Stevenson
The Fountain of Prosperity (2007) is a reconstruction of the ‘Moniac’, a machine designed in the late 1940s by New Zealand economist Bill Phillips to illustrate the concept of monetary flow in national economies. A fixed volume of red-dyed water, representing money, is pumped through a system of transparent tubes and sluices into clear chambers representing factors such as ‘surplus balances’ and ‘International Monetary Funds’. Regarded as an extremely developed tool for analysing economic functions, 15 of these devices were built and shipped around the world. Stevenson discovered that one of the machines was acquired by the Central Bank of Guatemala in 1952, and has imagined what it might look like today. His replica is corroding and leaking, and the chamber marked ‘held balances’ is empty, suggesting that the economic model it represents is on the verge of collapse.
Read more about the project here.
David F. Mutiloa, Alvaro Icaza, Gloria Fernandez, Joaquín Reyes
‘Transacción’ (2010) by David F. Mutiloa, Alvaro Icaza, Gloria Fernandez and Joaquín Reyes.
The prize money of a government award was turned into 1 euro cents and offered back to the public during an exhibition.