Mohamed Bourouissa, Stef Kamaris, Marie Vedel: Cheese is time, time is money, money is monopoly

To live costs money. For some, the market is ready to turn a business idea from dream to reality. For others, the door is only open to parallel activities based on exactly the same business model—supply and demand. The difference is spelled exclusion. Exclusion from the market, from society, from the right to an equal life.

Mohamed Bourouissa’s video La valeur du produit (The value of the product) is a kind of crash course in business administration. The entrepreneurial strategy of selling a product at the right price and maintaining the balance between supply and demand is common to all commercial activities. The same objective, the same vocabulary, just a different product—the sale of “organic” goods to bring in “wheat” (French slang for money).

Cheese is time, time is money, money is monopoly. Stef Kamaris’ sculptural objects and material experiments could not express it better. They are dripping with excess, like extra-everything materialised. PacMen made out of cheese (Emmental and Babybel), cakes made out of Danablu, slot machines and credit rocks—a constant quest for the desire of consumption. The logic of free market democratisation is skewed and monopoly is the injustice of the economic system to win the game.

Marie Vedel’s pigmented wax tongues The Singer’s Tongue reach up from the ground and seem to sing out their grief, their desire, their lost love. The myth of Orpheus and Eurydice is the embodiment of lovers, but the crooning Orpheus fails to rescue his beloved from the underworld. His desire takes over and in the same moment he loses her forever. Her name, Eurydice, means the profound justice.

Individual success is measured in money. To the tune of ”Foetus” by Booba, one of the key figures in French hip hop, euro coins are produced en masse by La Monnaie de Paris (Paris Mint). In Mohamed Bourouissa’s version, the coins are embossed with the rapper’s portrait. The raw lyrics of society are monetised and the profit circle is complete.