I always love to interview the conceptual artist Jonathon Keats. His art consists in crafting up out-there propositions that make you think and laugh in equal measure. His latest is the First Bank of Antimatter, the antidote to an econopocalypse gone viral.
Jonathon Keats Derails Econopocalypse With Antimatter Currency
Conceptual artist (and Wired smartypants) Jonathan Keats is back to rescue our cratering currency by pegging it to antimatter. That ought to negate decades of devaluation just fine.
“The anti-economy supported and financed by the First Bank of Antimatter will necessarily be independent of ours,” Keats explained in an e-mail to Wired.com. “And if some analyst ventures too far into that territory, he’ll explode with a force of approximately 2,140,000 kilotons of TNT.”
The First Bank of Antimatter, opening Nov. 12 at San Francisco’s Modernism gallery, fits the 38-year-old artist like an underwater mortgage fits American homeowners. Our hyper-real economy, drunk on rampant debt securitization with little in the way of real value or regulation, has sundered the global marketplace. It has also nearly choked the dollar to death.
While the Great Depression found the world economy severing its connection to the gold standard in search of normalcy. Our economy, Keats argues, should sever its connection to the material world altogether.
“Backed by paper, our economy depends on good faith, which tends to be in short supply,” said Keats. “Since my alternative currency is secured by antimatter positrons, which are finite in quantity, antimatter depository notes avoid that problem. It’s abstract like fiat money, yet accountable like currency backed by precious metals.” MORE @ WIRED