The Art of Making Money # 1
2011
Performance presented at the event The Dismantled Cabaret, organized by Alex Kovacs; Chats Palace, London.
What about Filipa Guimarães?
She is a performance artist, originally from Portugal. I first met her at Tate Modern early in 2011 when I spontaneously decided to heckle a piece of performance art, which was purportedly embodying a spirit of revolution. As spontaneous heckles go it was a complicated one and it would take me too long to go into the specifics, but its worth saying that afterwards one of the artists responsible for creating the piece said he had liked my intervention. After the performance Filipa approached me and a friendship developed.
At the Dismantled Cabaret Filipa performed a piece called "The Art of Making Money". Dressed in a dark business suit she placed a clay pot filled with soil on the floor of the stage and carefully "planted" a banknote in the soil, encouraging it with a sprinkling from a violet-coloured watering can. After lying down and watching the pot, waiting for some kind of miraculous growth to take place, she walked around the entirety of the audience, asking each person individually for money by making a silent begging gesture with her outstretched hand. This created quite a tense and charged atmosphere. Having been given some coins and a £10 banknote, she returned to the stage, carefully placed these new examples of money into the soil and again used her watering can to attempt to hasten their growth.
Excerpt from the text "Alex Kovacs Interviews Himself about The Dismantled Cabaret", by the british writer Alex Kovacs.
Note:
Alex Kovacs is a british novelist. His book The Currency of Paper was published by The Dalkey Archive Press in July 2013.
The Dismantled Cabaret was an event created to provide a platform for avant garde and experimental work of differing kinds, within the domains of music, performance art and poetry.
2011
Performance presented at the event The Dismantled Cabaret, organized by Alex Kovacs; Chats Palace, London.
What about Filipa Guimarães?
She is a performance artist, originally from Portugal. I first met her at Tate Modern early in 2011 when I spontaneously decided to heckle a piece of performance art, which was purportedly embodying a spirit of revolution. As spontaneous heckles go it was a complicated one and it would take me too long to go into the specifics, but its worth saying that afterwards one of the artists responsible for creating the piece said he had liked my intervention. After the performance Filipa approached me and a friendship developed.
At the Dismantled Cabaret Filipa performed a piece called "The Art of Making Money". Dressed in a dark business suit she placed a clay pot filled with soil on the floor of the stage and carefully "planted" a banknote in the soil, encouraging it with a sprinkling from a violet-coloured watering can. After lying down and watching the pot, waiting for some kind of miraculous growth to take place, she walked around the entirety of the audience, asking each person individually for money by making a silent begging gesture with her outstretched hand. This created quite a tense and charged atmosphere. Having been given some coins and a £10 banknote, she returned to the stage, carefully placed these new examples of money into the soil and again used her watering can to attempt to hasten their growth.
Excerpt from the text "Alex Kovacs Interviews Himself about The Dismantled Cabaret", by the british writer Alex Kovacs.
Note:
Alex Kovacs is a british novelist. His book The Currency of Paper was published by The Dalkey Archive Press in July 2013.
The Dismantled Cabaret was an event created to provide a platform for avant garde and experimental work of differing kinds, within the domains of music, performance art and poetry.