Pengar är ingen konst, det är poesi

"Pengar är ingen konst" brukar ju jag säga. "Pengar är poesi" skulle förmodligen min konstnärsvän Erik Van Hove välja att uttrycka sig just nu. Erik som vanligtvis är baserad i Tokyo rapporterar ifrån Vietnam:

"Nickels, paper bullets, falling leaves, and bullshit bombs. These are some of the nicknames given to war propaganda delivered by air in the form of printed flyers.

During the last years of the Vietnam War (that the Vietnamese call the American War), millions of counterfeit North Vietnam paper money was dropped from American bombers, one side of the bill looked real, the reverse side was a propaganda letter to the commies telling them they were going down, and telling the public that there government was wasting their lives on a war they could not win. Here is an example of this paper money bought from a bomb handler in Guam, stationed in the US Air Force in 1972.

The circulation of bank notes in any city, moving from hand to hand, can be seen as a diffuse network of invisible, genuine and fast moving message boards in the public space.

The intervention, entitled "Bill Boards", consists in recycling war propaganda techniques for poetic and artistic purposes. It hereby consisted in the transcription in different languages of short poems, thoughts and daily reflections on banknotes, before using them to buy noodles and beer at many different bustling sidewalk street stalls and bars in central Hanoi's Hoan Kiem district, where, as you read these lines, they must still be in circulation to buy raw beef noodle soup, dog meat or vegetables.

The work echoes a similar intervention proposed in Alexandria in 2005, click here for a description."