Project Evolution by Sebastian Salfate

I have expanding more conceptually than thematically towards my project. First of all I have come to the idea that "art respond not the world we want but to the one we are living in". This clarification have become seminal in how I portray my artistic work. This means that I can create work that perceives a better world but that is related to the world in itself. This also come from others ideas I have been juggling with like the relationship between memory and imagination (research and creative impulse) and the concept of the artists labour as a medium of it's time. This finally force my work into become more of a confirmation of the world we leave in rather than a illusion of a better world. This have give more intensity to y idea of contrasting the slangs surrounding the term money. Here research matters as a factual representation of world, ideology and cultural behavior. The words I have found so far in the United States are: 
  1. Bacon
  2. Bands
  3. Bank
  4. Bankrolls
  5. Benjamins
  6. Big bucks
  7. Bills
  8. Biscuits
  9. Bisquick
  10. Blue cheese
  11. Blue cheddar
  12. Bookoo bucks
  13. Bones
  14. Bread
  15. Brick
  16. Broccoli
  17. Buckaroos
  18. Bucks
  19. C-note
  20. Cabbage
  21. Cake
  22. Cash
  23. Cash money
  24. Cheese
  25. Cheddar
  26. Chits
  27. Chips
  28. Chump change
  29. Clams
  30. Coin
  31. CREAM
  32. Dead presidents
  33. Dinero
  34. Dime
  35. Doubloons
  36. Dough
  37. Fetti
  38. Five-Spots
  39. Fivers
  40. Franklins
  41. Frog
  42. Frog skins
  43. Gold
  44. Green
  45. Greenbacks
  46. Gs
  47. Grand
  48. Guac
  49. Gwop
  50. Guineas
  51. Half-yard
  52. Hundies
  53. Jacksons
  54. Knots
  55. Large
  56. Lincolns
  57. Long green
  58. Lolly
  59. Loots
  60. Lucci
  61. Lucre
  62. Mega bucks
  63. Monkey
  64. Moola
  65. Notes
  66. Nugget
  67. OPM
  68. Paper
  69. Payola
  70. Pesos
  71. Plunder
  72. Quid
  73. Rack
  74. Rock
  75. Roll
  76. Sawbuck
  77. Scratch
  78. Scrilla
  79. Shekels
  80. Singles
  81. Smackers
  82. Stacks
  83. Ten-spot
  84. Tenners
  85. Wad.
  86. Wonga
  87. Yard
I love that all this random words together create some sort of poem of concepts that can be both assimilated to money or presented as an alone random concept.

As I mentioned before the idea is to construct this portable energy device that allow me to move around the city with the minimum weight, arranging an electronic sign that shows one by one the words researched. 

The idea is that the same electric device (a car battery doing alternate current) could produce small activities as sharing books and movies that you can't find in Cuba. 
The impact of the work is that it create a community by looking back more than by looking forward, understanding through the cultural differences of both place how mutual agreement can be found. Also the same work creates a certain problematization around the power of words, on how books, concepts and they usage are deprived from a society or become unreachable for political purposes.

The project goals are both alienation (through the electric sign) and integration (through the different activities of technological "assitentialism" by conecting every day people with a piece of culture that can't be found. I am personally interested in printing copies of El Oscuro Pajaro de la Noche by Jose Donoso as it is a book that I feel super related lately and that expand the idea of agreement and the communication between to different cultures. I also though that I wanted something that could represent me as a Chilean more than as someone coming from the United States and this book can be the key to that. Finally I have been thinking about selling pirated videoart in the streets of Cuba. For this I plan to steal from different libraries (riping them into my computer) the vast information that exist in Los Angeles as an archive of moving images. My idea is to re-sell or give out a bunch of this video art that either don't have visibility because of audience interest or because of an idealogical embargo. I think I need to still explore this idea because I am not sure how in the edge of illegality my work would be.


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