ONE CAREFUL OWNER
Words by Hilary the day after the opening night of ‘Defaced: Money, Conflict, Protest’ at the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge.
Big Bang 2 ‘debt in transit’ explosion. London docklands. May 2019. Photograph by Graeme Truby.
Our golden Ford ‘debt in transit’ van filled with 6000 individually stamped papers (thank you Phil for doing many, many of these!) representing £1.2 Million of cancelled local debt exploded in front of London’s towers of finance in May 2019.
We picked up every little piece of the van and returned to the rebel bank HSCB (Hoe Street Central Bank) where, with the expertise and enthusiasm of trusty Bank Job team members George and Linden, we hung it in exploded form - an operation that entailed taking out suspended ceilings, repainting and rewiring. Our Bank signage became ‘Bang’ and we opened to the public for Art Night with fly press in motion stamping out coins from the van’s metal fragment to distribute to our ‘bond holders’ -the many people who invested in bonds to make the explosion happen.
The van remained in suspended animation to witness book launches, debt story cafes and visits from University and youth groups but its future looked uncertain when we were handed the eviction date of Christmas Day 2019. With fortunate foresight the Fitzwilliam Museum enabled a salvage operation and I entrusted the gleaming parts and papers to an aircraft hanger in flat Cambridgeshire fields - safely contained as we reassembled our dreams in lockdown London.
Thanks to the dedication and vision of curator Richard Kelleher a plan was forming –for an exhibition of currencies of war and dissent. An Art Fund New Collecting Award enabled the Bank Job banknotes and bonds to be some of the first in this speculative collection and over the last few years, hindered by pandemic but now emerging to greet the world, the project has developed and become what opened today – ‘Defaced! Money, Conflict, Protest.’ As the website says it is a show that examines the interplay between money, power and dissent over the last 250 years – with a key strand of the show exploring the role of the individual in protesting for rights and representation.
Installing the wreckage of Big Bang 2 in the Fitzwilliam Museum.
The last two weeks have involved intensive installation - in my element in hardhat and steel cap boots up a ladder wondering if anyone there ever eats or drinks. I ‘ve witnessed the layers of labour involved in the making of an exhibition – MCD Group and gallery teams expertly assembling the brilliant designs of Alan Farlie and Tom Piper, behind the scenes observations of gallery interpretation as artform, lighting designers busy illuminating, the walkie talkie chatter of the internal team– attention to detail coming together into a constructed narrative. I ‘ve still only glimpsed half of the collection - from the work of kennardphillips, Banksy and STIK to defaced coins from the Northern Irish Troubles, from a giant Bogg’s dollar to a cannon arriving in the lift.
Temporarily leaving my position near the ceiling hanging car parts and muddied debt papers, I join Dan interviewing Richard the curator in his office. It’s a wondrous space with walls stacked with wooden coin cases each one labelled with a different era and packed with history. Viewing a choice selection we see objects of both great intricacy and suprising simplicity. Our stamped coins from the steel panels of the van don’t feel out of place here. Amid all the gold I single out a tarnished copper. This is evidence of the Great Debasement – a time when Henry VIII debased his own currency by adding copper to the mix to reduce ‘precious’ metal content. This devaluing was enacted to increase revenue for the crown. The Dissolution of the monasteries, acquisition of that wealth and ever-increasing taxes just weren’t enough to pay for Henry VIII’s wars and indulgences. We stand looking at this artefact of past greed and abuse of power as the aftermath of Kwarteng and Truss’s mini budget plays out - of crashing pounds, oil lobbying and corruption - disaster capitalism profiting the 1% and profoundly against people and planet.
Richard Kelleher. Senior Curator Medieval & Modern Money. University of Cambridge, Fitzwilliam Museum.
Emerging, generic press mentions of the show focus on ‘An exhibition of defaced money mutilated as cries of anger, injustice or despair’. Headlines highlight the outrage of defaced notes as affronts to monarchy and establishment whilst ignoring the desecration of democracy by truly dark money. Anger and despair do exist in the face of the Great Debasement happening now – of our values, of our hopes for a just present and future. And yet there is more than anguish. As exhibit after exhibit shows, from Suffragette coins inscribed with ‘votes for women’ to local currencies like the Brixton Pound these are acts of both resistance and agency turning the powerless into the powerful and reimagining and redefining our relationship to society and who, what and how we value.
Last night we arrived at the opening ignoring the casual dress code, savouring the best of times amid the worst of times. The neoclassical columns of the Fitzwilliam Museum were clad in defacement as marketing - the show a seeming departure, a beginning of confronting the history, limitations and potential of Museum and University. Later we were treated to a rare dinner - a long table with much cutlery and conversation watched over by ornate Grandfather/mother of all clocks (or ‘long case’ clock as a friendly Keeper of Coins informed me). Entranced by table decorations of wire and dahlias, the words of Lewis Carroll’s Mad Hatter come to my slightly intoxicated mind “I dare say you never even spoke to Time!” How to speak to and of this time?
‘Timely’ is often used to describe works of art, films, exhibitions but what does that mean? Of the now, then and future? Since we started making Bank Job the crises have kept on cascading and the need for emergency measures become ever more pressing – the project timelier and timelier…curiouser and curiouser. We inhabit this time, meeting in the midst of our lives and histories, living the reverberations of the Big Bang 2 now hanging in a gallery space and reaching new audiences and those of its namesake – the financial deregulation of the 1980s and all that follows in its wake. The Bank Job doesn’t end – it travels, mutates and both forms and informs our new project POWER as knowledge bank and impetus for action. The gallery inscription for the Bank Job banknotes and bonds is titled ‘Subverting instruments of finance’ and we continue this through the issuing of our emergency currency and demand notes the ‘Greenbacks’ - themselves emerging from this contact with the world of numismatics and notaphily - the currencies of war and dissent that began this particular story.
In a hopeful step, we transgress the black and yellow hazard tape and place a luminous sign on the exploded van. ‘FOR SALE. 100,000. ONE CAREFUL OWNER.’ Can poetry and pragmatism combine? Could Big Bang 2 give explosive power to the building of a renewable POWER STATION (www.power.film), supplementing the exchange of Greenbacks for sterling with a vital fuel injection? From the wreckage of one project - one system, gathering the fragments and putting them to work.
Spacious relic of fossil capitalism. Year of registration: 1986. Trusted automobile brand. Wrought from furnace, mine and labour across continents. Finished in the enduring colour of wealth. Transformed by explosive force of water. Decontaminated. Recycled. Invaluable. Open top conversion. No service history available. Mileage:unknown. Cargo: visions of economic justice. Features: radio, film projection.
Thank you to Alec and Lucy who gave the van over to its transformation from dormant green tinged white van to shining wreckage.
The exhibition is on 11th October 2022 – Jan 8th 2023
There is a great catalogue with an essay by Hilary on Big Bang 2
Hilary will be giving a lunch time talk ‘Defaced: Experiments in Alchemy’ https://tickets.museums.cam.ac.uk/5368/5623
And taking part in this evening panel ‘Defacement and Protest’ https://tickets.museums.cam.ac.uk/5643/5644
