Submission by Numbers
Other images
Description of work
An installation of three ‘withdrawings’ for the group exhibition "What’s Yours Is Mine".
Using credit card purchases at pre-determined locations, the bank statement becomes a key to making a map of points in the cityscape of San Francisco. By joining these points, outlines of bondage furniture are described, -the St Andrew’s Cross, the Objectifier, and the Cohort- all simple structures for the humiliation and discomfort of the submissive subject.
The sexual adventurousness of San Francisco, along with its gold-fuelled banking history, informed these drawings; along with the language of sexual submission in the many websites devoted to hating the U.S. Bank- where most tirades begin with, “ I was screwed by the U.S. Bank when…”
The printed U.S. Bank statement has a section titled “Summary of Your U.S. Bank Relationship” in which is given balances. It comes after a section, “ NEWS FOR YOU”, which in my short ‘relationship’ has contained routine postings of fee and penalty increases (pain), and gives the institution the tone of a dominatrix.
This project attempts to make explicit the roles between consumer and corporate custodian;
between our methods of consumption and privacy; and the relationship a bank has with us- protector and user.
It is also an investigative play with form; with transaction records as a method of mark-making, where a street address can be plot-able upon the X, Y grid of the city, and pieced together by those who have access to the records.
Materials used
Paper, silk ribbon, easels