money and dreams. counting the last day of the sigmund freud money. rainer ganahl . das zählen der letzten tage der sigmund freud banknote

Das Zählen der letzen Tage der Sigmund Freud Banknote

Counting the last day of the Sigmund Freud money.

I started to record my dreams in the summer of 2001 after I saw a 50 Austrian Schilling (ATS) bill on a refrigerator at a party in Brooklyn. I was wondering about the decorative functions of Austrian money in the USA. I was told Sigmund Freud is depicted on it. This was a surprise to me, having used this money for so many years without being aware of its iconography. I soon learned that many fellow Austrians ignored this little fact as well. I found it peculiar and indicative of Freud’s writing itself. With the looming introduction of the new European currency, Austrian legal tender was doomed to disappear. During the remaining eight months that Freud’s paper image circulated in the hands, pockets, cash registries, and banks of Austrians,
I created this dream-artwork, which I entitled Das Zählen der letzten Tage der Sigmund Freud Banknote [The Counting of the Last Days of the Sigmund Freud Banknote].
For this work I tried to remember my dreams and write them down as quickly and accurately as I could, often at the “scene of the crime,” that is, in bed, sometimes shaken up by a nightmare.
After having written down the dream on the computer,
I checked the value of the 50 ATS bill on CNN’s online currency converter. Simultaneously, this online service gave conversions for a number of other currencies.
I complemented these listings with the economic data of two major US stock indexes, the Dow Jones and the Nasdaq. At that moment, I also checked how many books on Sigmund Freud were offered on Amazon.
com and on Buecher.de, a German equivalent to the US online bookseller.

In the period from July 1, 2001 to the end of February 2002, when the actual currency ceased circulation, I produced 144 works with dreams. Thought I mostly slept at night, sometimes I also fell asleep during the day and dreamt. Many works contain multiple dreams, since I quite often dream several times a night. I experienced myself as a serial dreamer.

rainer ganahl on this work: here: Who wants to know anyway ?

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