Art|Sci's current artists-in-residence Lucie Strecker and Klaus Spiess present the performative installation XCurrency as a work in progress. Their artistic research explores experimental currency systems that can negotiate value through their liveness when mediated by interfaces with consumers and their affective resources.
XCurrency is based on Lucie Strecker’s and Klaus Spiess’s previous work Hare’s blood+ which reflected on artworks incorporating animal relics. The artists designed a synthetic gene from a Joseph Beuys multiple that contained hare’s blood and spliced it into living cells which were put up for auction. The bids at the auction were linked to the living and dying processes of the cells, positioning them as agents in the making of value, in line with a counter-economy envisioned by Joseph Beuys.
Whether proposing exchange by liveness within an auction or as now relating the informational virtuality of the expanded genetic alphabet of XDNA with speculation on the financial markets, the artists always propose a reciprocal qualitative dependency between currencies and their consumers.
Lucie Strecker and Klaus Spiess have been developing transdisciplinary performances and installations that address biopolitical issues for many years. A former endocrinologist, psychosomaticist and medical anthropologist, Klaus Spiess now works as an artist and associate professor at the Medical University of Vienna. Lucie Strecker is an performance artist and researcher and holds a senior postdoc position at the University of Applied Arts Vienna.
Los Angeles
UCLA Art Sci Center
Lucie Strecker and Klaus Spiess
XCurrency
January 12, 2017 – February 12, 2017
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