The Color of Money

Artist and activist Oliver Ressler’s film documents the incredibly peaceful moments of arrest of a group of demonstrators in the Bílina coal mine in Northern Bohemia in the Czech Republic. In June 2018, hundreds of activists blocked mine operation in protest against the environmental damage it inflicts. Despite the protesters’ decision not to damage the mine and to avoid direct confrontation with the police, hundreds of them were detained. The film begins and ends with a shot filmed from inside the police van, focusing mainly on activists awaiting deportation against the backdrop of a landscape defaced by the mining operations. The camera is accompanied by the voice of a semi-fictional character reflecting on the meanings and implications of mass civil disobedience. The film is part of Ressler’s ongoing project, documenting protests intended to raise awareness of the climate crisis.

Artist and activist Oliver Ressler’s film documents the incredibly peaceful moments of arrest of a group of demonstrators in the Bílina coal mine in Northern Bohemia in the Czech Republic. In June 2018, hundreds of activists blocked mine operation in protest against the environmental damage it inflicts. Despite the protesters’ decision not to damage the mine and to avoid direct confrontation with the police, hundreds of them were detained. The film begins and ends with a shot filmed from inside the police van, focusing mainly on activists awaiting deportation against the backdrop of a landscape defaced by the mining operations. The camera is accompanied by the voice of a semi-fictional character reflecting on the meanings and implications of mass civil disobedience. The film is part of Ressler’s ongoing project, documenting protests intended to raise awareness of the climate crisis.
At present, the activists have begun a fundraising campaign to battle the suit filed against them by the Czech authorities. For donations and additional information, see: https://www.darujme.cz/projekt/1201737?locale=en.

The Offspring Resembles the Parent by Swedish filmmakers Lina Selander and Oscar Mangione takes as its point of departure banknotes printed in the 1920s as emergency money to be used in times of financial crisis or inflation, or in designated enclaves, such as colonies and internment camps. Through the notes’ visually dramatic, meticulous design, intended to convey clear messages via image and text, the artists address the relationship between capital and labor, as well as money’s abstract quality and its affinities with memory.

The work was created for the 2015 Venice Biennale, and has since been featured in countless exhibitions and included in film screenings the world over.

What can the World Trade Organization’s art collection tell us about the history of globalization? The story begins in Geneva in 1919 at the founding of the International Labour Organization after the First World War, and it crescendos at the Century’s end with the Seattle protests of the WTO ministerial meetings in 1999. If there is an antagonist in this story it is a building. Once the home of the International Labour Organization (ILO) it was originally built under a mission for the dignity of work, following the chaos of world war. But by the 1970s, and culminating in the 90s, the building is faced with a crisis of character, made apparent by its transformation from an organization for international labour into an organization for the world’s trade, the WTO. Pitted against the building is the protagonist of the disembodied hand. The hand’s journey begins inside the building, adorning the walls of its interiors in celebrated depictions of people laboring from around the world. But a consequence of the building’s turn sends the hand into exile, and the human body with it. Images of working bodies were covered up or taken down and replaced by maps, globes and grids. Who gets to imagine the world? And who must care for it after?  This work goes hand in hand.