Derivatives > On Translation -The Bank
In his piece On Translation: The Bank, the Spanish artist Antoni Muntadas explores financial currents resulting from globalization and the fragility of the value of money. The piece consists of a digital image, 76.5 centimetres wide by 101.5 high, printed on lambda cibachrome.
The piece featured at the On Translation exhibition, created by Muntadas in 2003, which revolved around the concept of translation and the exchange of global information. In The Bank, translation is interpreted as currency exchange. In other words, the artist has understood the action of changing one currency into another as a monetary translation.
The piece poses viewers with a question: How long would it take to make 1,000 dollars disappear when subjected to successive currency exchanges? All one needs to know to solve this simple problem is how much commission the banks will charge. The question, however, highlights the fact that all acts of translation entail a mutation. In this case, the piece deals with monetary translation. The material that is lost, or changes hands, during the translation is the monetary value. By focussing on money, Muntadas explores one of the many phenomena derived from globalization, the constant flow of capital.
The Spanish artist Antoni Muntadas is considered to be one of the fathers of Net.art. His prolific artistic output includes outstanding works, such as the piece File Room, developed in the early days of Internet, which consisted of harvesting censored information to make a public, worldwide data bank. This work was a historic landmark for all other critical and radical works generated online. Muntadas is professor at the MIT.
