Transaction (2023) is an interactive installation comprised of various works, including HOW MUCH DO YOU OWE? (2023), a coin machine juke box and a dark room that features an original song, Broken Record (2023), and three square, silver coins, Richter*** (2023) placed on a central, rotating plinth.

Transaction was part of the exhibition “El Gran Grito” (2023) curated by Chus Martinez and El Palomar at Kunsthaus Baselland (CH).

“El Gran Grito”, exhibition views – Kunsthaus Baselland (CH) 2023

When visitors throw a coin into the machine, an experience is activated in the adjacent dark room. With no pricing signage, HOW MUCH DO YOU OWE? invites visitors to reflect on their own financial privilege and determine what is fair entry fee. The top of the coin machine is mirrored so that visitors confront their own image as they pay. The lighting design illuminates visitors from behind, creating a soft aura around their reflection.

Payment activates the experience: an overhead light switches on in the dark room, which illuminates a central, rotating circular plinth that displays three square silver coins. The disco-inspired track, Broken Record (written and performed by Saturne Camus-Govoroff, composed by Li Tavor) plays throughout the space. The choice of musical genre connects the installation to the playful, glamorous, and empowering energy of underground dance parties. Further, the lyrics give space and structure to the artist’s voice and calls attention to the queer shape of the silver coins. As a multifaceted meditation on the absurdity of normative, “square” value systems, these coins are offered up as rare, desireable objects with cultural currency but no monetary value within the financial system.

After five minutes, the room goes dark, the plinth stops rotating, and the music stops playing.

“El Gran Grito”, exhibition views – Kunsthaus Baselland (CH) 2023

During the opening reception of “El Gran Grito” on 25 August 2023, two silver coins were stolen from the Saturne’s installation, Transaction (2023). In the following days, the artist faces online and in real life harassment and  threats to their safety. A well-intentioned journalist writing for Basellandschaftliche Zeitung publishes an expose that depicts the artist as the lone victim of an isolated incident. In a similar vein, leadership of the organizing and presenting institutions issue public statements characterizing events as a possible accident or misunderstanding. These inadequate, institutional responses (from the press, an art school, and art house) downplay the offense’s severity as well as its psychological, emotional, and systemic violence.

At the exhibition’s closing reception, the artist met this institutional silence with a number of silent actions. Hours before the event, the artist tagged a white wall that was part of their installation with the words “PAY UP”. In addition, Saturne showed up to the event –wearing a loose mesh top, cut-off denim shorts, and tall chunky heels– flanked by two bodyguards charged with minding the artist’s safety throughout the evening. Concurrently, the artist enlisted several unidentified accomplices to pass out slips of paper with provocative phrases, some of which referenced titles of previous works, meeting the institutional desire for propriety and discretion with a quiet, considered artistic gesture that enabled them to exercise their own personal agency.

A few minutes before the event’s conclusion, Transaction was further vandalised by an unknown member of the public.

“El Gran Grito”, exhibition views – Kunsthaus Baselland (CH) 2023
pictures by Gabrielle Montagne

“El Gran Grito”, exhibition views – Kunsthaus Baselland (CH) 2023
pictures by Christoph Bühler