Exhibition showcases alternative currency systems from across the world

A video still featuring an art collector with flowers made using Euro banknotesIn the first part of a 34minute video an elderly art collector is shown living alone in a home surrounded by art She suffers from dementia a fallout of Alzheimers Her favourite activity is making origami flowers using Euro notes When dissatisfied with her creation she throws the flowers in a trash bag and starts afreshIn the second part a young African immigrant wanders on the streets of Athens with a supermarket trolley looking for scrap metal Accidentally he finds a trash bag that contains flowers shaped from Euro notesIn the third part an artist seeking inspiration for a new work observes and records street scenes in Athens with his iPad A snapshot attracts his attention an abandoned trolley full of scrap metalIts easy to guess the common thread that runs through the beautifully interwoven threepart video mdash the idea of money and the generation of valueCurator Abhijan Gupta sets up the exhibition at Mumbai Art Room PicsStefanos Tsivopoulos Prometeo gallery di Ida Pisani Suresh KarkeraValue of zeroThe video along with a rich archive of texts images and objects which revolve around the idea of alternative currency systems is part of History Zero an installation by Greek artist Stefanos Tsivopoulos who lives and works between Amsterdam and New York The exhibition which made its debut at the Greek Pavilion in the 2013 Venice Biennale comes to Mumbai for the first timeIn the late 80s cans of Heineken beer were used as currency by foreign companies for Angolans when they faced difficulty paying themThe decision to bring it down was tied to demonetisation Produced in the larger context of the ongoing Greek economic crisis in Mumbai it brings together these two moments of collapse both arising out of crises of currency The show uses the immediate context to speculate on what is fundamentally wrong with the economic space we create and inhabit and how we may think beyond them It doesnt see them as isolated incidents but crucial failures of the currency form as such shares Abhijan Gupta curator of the exhibition who works with the Dhaka Art SummitEnglish Trade Tokens used in the 1600sPicStefanos Tsivopoulos History Zero 2013 Archive objects in Batikuling wood produced by and courtesy of the Bellas Artes Projects the PhilippinesOpen the archiveThe archive offers an insight into the alternative currency systems across historical periods These include communities that invent their own money For instance the system of cash transfer using prepaid mobile phone minutes something that is evolving as a form of currency in parts of Africa Or an anticorruption campaign by a Chennai nonprofit where fake currency actually contained antibribery messagesCowrie shells PicStefanos Tsivopoulos History Zero 2013 Archive objects in Batikuling wood produced by and courtesy of the Bellas Artes Projects the PhilippinesThe exhibition also includes The InterSpecies Token Game developed by members of the Economic Space Agency collective ECSA a Californiabased startup Gupta elaborates The game creates a space for viewers to speculate over new modes of economic functioning which are structured not around debt or accumulation but around increasing and taking stock of our entanglements with each other