Art & Design Competition and Exhibition:
Currency as Space

                           

HDLU Treasury and Mint, Zagreb, Croatia                                                                     Tijuana Border, Mexico, U.S.

HR

Open call:  The exhibition BORROWORROB: In Search of Symmetry, in conjunction with the HDLU Treasury and Mint is holding an open call exhibition for the design of currency.  Entrants are encouraged to design a paper currency or alternative for the geopolitics of space.  50 projects will be exhibited at the HDLU, 10 projects will be selected by an international panel for publication and commentary and receive an award. Deadline March 1st, 2014.  http://borroworrob.org/

In what way can your currency be used for two different spaces?  Could each side represent a different value or function?  Could each side be used only in a specific location or space? What spatial distributions occur through the functions of your currency?

Currency:   Currency is a space and at the same time a medium which distributes and spatializes things, people, money, and services in varying ways, with varying intensities, geographically and psychologically. The objects to which it was once tied (gold), has changed and will change yet again.  Currency and space have quasi-fluid and quasi-stable functions.  But a mechanism of exchange is not the same thing as the forces which have assembled it. How does one analyze those forces?

Exchange: What if those forces were never about equalizing relationships, mediating flow of goods and services, cancelling debts and promises, but rather a form of exchange in which something hidden is exchanged for something apparent, like a dream, as two sides of surface that never intersect? What if spatialization were the primary function of currency?
Space: Space is not homogeneous, it is composed of forces.  There is a difference between entering space and leaving space, between acquiring space and losing it. Space is asymmetrical.

 Asymmetry:  The difference between what it takes to earn money and what it takes to spend it is also asymmetrical.  The relationship between currency and space is not new, but its ability to distribute people, things, and relations are not always the same from place to place or from one historical moment to the next.  So the question operating in this Open Call is how does currency spatializes people, their things, their relations? And how might that asymmetry be folded, doubled, inverted, and transformed into other functions?

Economic questions are not new as a form of artistic practice that shuttles between political and social research.  But the variations of protest which many artists are drawn and which articulate economic, social, and political asymmetries, are simultaneously articulated as spatial conflicts which seek legitimacy and symmetry in relation to other forces in which space is opened and closed, bordered, claimed and distributed, tracked and counted, occupied and dispersed.

The HDLU Treasury and Mint will exhibit selected submissions during March 2014 in the PM Gallery.  Submissions may be in the form of paper currency, installation or performance.

Open Call:  Currency for the conflict of space
Registration:
Please register a name and email by February 21st at treasury@borroworrob.org
*If multiple authors, please include all author names and just one email.
Registered participants will receive a serial number unique to their currency.
Submission:
Opening Date for Submissions:  January 15, 2014.
Submission Deadline:  March 1st, 2014.

Technical Requirements and Submission Guidelines:
1. Paper Currency
A4 PDF with the front and back of the proposed currency design on one side of the A4.
2. Alternative Currency
Entrants can suggest other media for currency, installation or performance.  Please describe or illustrate the currency on one side of an A4 sheet and the committee will install (or perform) the described currency or install the A4 sheet.  Please format the directions or explanation in two columns of similar width and height on one side of the A4 sheet.  Please include up to one additional page of directions for installation or performance.
3. Use of Currency
On one additional sheet, please describe in 100 words how the currency is to be used, what kind of space, and the spatial/geographical limits of its use.
4.  Identification
Please identify in the lower left corner of each sheet the serial number that has been assigned to the entrant (or team).

Eligibility: Anyone is eligible to enter
Fee: None

Deadlines:
Submission Deadline: March 1, 2014
Submission Process: Upload one pdf (no larger than 4 mb) to mint@borroworrob.org
Exhibition information contact:  mint@borroworrob.org
Press:  press@borroworrob.org
Projects selected for the exhibition will be also be shown along with projects by artists Mladen Stilinović, Paolo Cirio, Peter Macapia, Peter Rostovsky, and others.
. . .
conflict of space
return of space
borrowing of space
spatializing of space
division of space
substitution of space
use of space
closure of space
opening of space
rearrangement of space
folding of space
creation of space
end of space
beginning of space
donation of space
hoarding of space
trade free zones
discretization of space (women’s bathroom/men’s bathroom)
. . .
Current Panel of Selection Committee and Respondents
Vito Acconci
Paolo Cirio
Dejan Kršić
Peter Macapia
Brett Scott
Srdjan Jovanovic Weiss

Borroworrob is made possible with the generous support of FACE Croatia, City Office for Education, Culture and Sport Zagreb, Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Croatia, EPSON, Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb, Pozor, AkzoNobel – Dulux, The Sheraton and Urban Stay Zagreb Agency.