Credits

Credits is a series of miniature works which Janez Janša, Janez Janša and Janez Janša have been developing since autumn 2012. It comprises motifs from their works, or motifs related to them, which are printed on bank and credit cards. The works were on display for the first time at the exhibition 1:1 at the Museum of Contemporary Art – Metelkova (MSUM).

Credits is part of the Janša’s ongoing research into the material manifestations of the legal consequences of their main artistic gesture as a trio: the name change. Sometimes by themselves, sometimes upon demand, institutions produce artifacts that have both a use and legal value and an artistic value, and that are the result of the “collaboration” between different production protocols and different systems. This is the case of these customized credit and debit cards, whose hybrid status of objects with a use value and as works of art interferes both with their production and with their display.
In terms of content, Credits is a study on trust, and its meaning within the financial system and the art system. According to Janez Janša:

Bank and credit cards are a medium of trust. Trust is the basic relation of the entire financial sector, which is essentially virtual. It is upheld by unconditional trust, by blind faith, so to speak, in the functioning of this virtuality. Once the basic pact of trust is broken, the entire system can collapse in a moment. Nowadays, financialisation is an extremely complex system, in which as little as possible is left to trust and financial stakes are ever more insured, but credit remains at the heart of it all: somebody gives us something hoping we will give it back one day. The creditor shows trust while we spend our future. The museum, or the gallery, is a space of trust, too, in a certain way. While banks keep money and look after it, fertilize it, lend it and create new values with it, museums do pretty much the same with artworks. In the museum, artwork acquires added value. Museums without artworks are like banks without money. The artists have entrusted the museum with their debit cards and thus handed over to the museum a part of their lives, at least that part which is directly related to their bank accounts.

In the Credits series, two institutions of trust are thus put on the same level: the banks create the conditions for production, produce debit cards and look after the money deposited into the accounts associated with these cards, while the museum ensures that the public has access to these objects and, at the same time, that these objects remain safe and intact.

Some of the triptychs and related “credits”

Press

Printed Matters

WORDING

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