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One man. One life. One price. |
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ABOUT THE PROJECT Show it with money! is an existential, commercial and artistic project that is questioning the meaning and the value of a human life, reflecting on the boundaries of consumerism and exploring new possibilities in art. Its goal is to challenge the common understanding about the value of life, money and art. INTRODUCTION
I didn't have a plan. The plan had me. THE REASONS BEHIND SELLING MY LIFE The idea of selling my life came to my mind after realizing I was getting sick of how things were turning out for me. I started to feel useless and when things are useless they are usually thrown away or sold. Of course I was also trying to think of a way to change things to better. But then I thought that it would make more sense if I simply used my condition to make a meaningful statement and in this way turn it into a quality rather than let it stay a handicap. The decision to turn my life into a product and sell it as such was obviously something that a lot of people would have a lot to say against. Because it indeed goes against the values that are often being promoted inside our society. But at the same time our way of living simply called for such a decision since we live in a world in which being valuable means having a price expressed in money. What I wanted to do at that point was to give the world of consumerism an "ultimate" product. A product which would bring the reason and meaning of buying things to the next level. A product which would bring the value of money beyond its actual value. And to do so I simply used what is without a doubt supposed to be the most valuable thing for most of us - a human life. By offering the most valuable thing there is for sale I gave the world of consumerism a chance to express itself at its best. Now everything has a price and can be bought. Even the most valuable thing we can think of - a human life. But then I wanted to go even further and so I offered my product - a human life in the way that the only reason for someone to buy it would be the act of buying it itself. The buyer of my product would have no other direct benefit from spending his money than the act of spending the money and spending it on the most valuable thing there is itself - a human life.
The reason why the buyer of my product would have no direct benefit from spending his money is because
after buying my life everything that I will produce in the next 25 years will be available to everyone
for free and without any copyright or similar restrictions which means that in the end people could even
make money out of it. And the show will go on...
SUMMARY
A person finds his life useless. And he turns it into a product. Turning it into a product is the only
goal of such action. And because of that the reason for buying such a product is simply reduced to the fact
that such a product exists. You buy something because it's for sale and for no other reason. The main point
is of course that we are talking about a human life which is the most valuable thing we can think of. In this
way we bring the act of spending money to the final level.
THE END OF ART The "Visual arts star" product is the most meaningful product available and it comes with a reflection that is going to bring new perspectives to the understanding of what is art made of and what can it be. What is art? It's obvious that the type of creativity which can be associated to the idea of art has existed as an integrated part of a human being since always. And with time human beings started to appreciate and value this aspect of their existence which gave it a particular meaning and role inside the society. In this way art was recognized as something that is. It was recognized as a fact. But for many centuries the question that artists tried to answer through the history of art was just how art should be, what was it supposed to express and what its role was. They didn’t try to define art for what it might be per se and in its essence but they simply shared their views about how it should be. Art was taken for granted. Until Marcel Duchamp started to wonder what makes art be art in the first place. And the lesson we learned from him was that under certain conditions and circumstances anything can be considered as art. And so it seemed that in principle all the questions regarding the definition of art were more or less answered… But did that also answer the question about what art is not? On the 8th of April, 2007 (Easter day) I decided to turn my life into a product and sell it as such. And one of the forms in which the product is available as well also included me as an artist making art. The significance, the importance and the value of such a decision and action inside the context in question can be fully understood only when we consider the fact that every art form/idea needs and uses a platform to give itself both the legitimacy and purpose. Art doesn’t happen in a vacuum. And most of the times if not always this platform comes in the form of “social universe” which consists of everything that our society is made of. Art is always related to the conditions, processes, ideas and possibilities that define our society at a given point in time. The difference in this case is that the platform itself was created as part of the artistic process. Andy Warhol for example didn’t create the conditions that influenced the ideas behind pop art. Pop art as well as any other artistic movement or idea so far was simply an artistic reaction to what was going on around the artist. They used what was already there. While what I use is a platform that I created by myself by deciding to turn my life into a product and sell it. The artistic platform: By turning my life into a product and offering it for sale I am actually not selling anything with a concrete form or content. My product exists as an idea and not as something real. Unlike with traditional products which are defined as products because they offer something real to the consumer’s real needs. The product I am offering exists as a product solely because of the idea of that being a product that was applied to it. It’s not a real product but it is simply thought as a product which won’t necessarily deliver what it was thought to deliver. Actually, it doesn’t even have to do that because for something to be thought you don’t need any bits of reality to be applied to it or involved in it. And because of that such concepts as the quality of a product, the usefulness of a product and similar are completely irrelevant. And why should they be relevant since there is no product (a real one) in the first place? The product is defined outside the boundaries of the definition of the product. It's merely a concept. And the product in question is the making of art. Making art is the product. The artwork: But this “making of art” as well doesn’t consist of anything concrete or real. There is no art but only the idea or an intention of making art. This again doesn’t imply anything concrete or real. This idea or intention doesn’t necessarily imply that there will indeed be art produced. Because it doesn’t have to. This idea doesn’t imply that there is an artist as well. And this fact means that first of all it’s completely irrelevant if something will be indeed produced or not in the first place but it also means that whether what will be produced will be art or not is as well the same irrelevant. So, such a questions as does art exist, what art is and what good art is become completely irrelevant and unnecessary when it’s about the making of art. And this means that art simply exists as an idea or a thought which will be the most close to its possible materialization when the product which is mentally designed as me making art will be bought. And this moment in which something to be possibly art doesn’t require to be art at all brings the reflections about art to its end. Because even if there was no art my idea wouldn't be anything less. The future of art: Andy Warhol said that in the future everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes. Well, I think that in the future everyone will be an artist. And the Show it with money! project is in a way the first step in that direction or at least it could be. Because from my part the most desirable scenario related to this project goes like this:
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