Via New Scientist's awesome new blog, Culture Lab, we learn that controversial conceptual artist Jonathon Keats has turned his keen post-modernist eye to constructing a new economy based on (I kid you not) antimatter. For those unfamiliar with his work, Keats is the dude who made his debut in 2000 with an "art piece" where he just sat in a chair for 24 hours thinking, while a nude female model hung out nearby.
Not the most auspicious beginning, I'll grant you, but Keats has gone on to do some pretty unusual, controversy-stirring stuff. He copyrighted his own mind in 2003, claiming it was a sculpture he had created, neuron by neuron, by thinking; he even created a conceptual futures market based on his copyright. In 2004, he collaborated with scientists at University of California, Berkeley, to genetically engineer god (they failed, but they garnered a lot of press). In 2005, he produced a series of painting based on signals detected by the radio telescope at the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico. His most controversial project? Establishing The Atheon, the first temple devoted to the worship of science, that annoyed scientists and believers alike.
Ah, but artists like Keats feed on controversy. Let's see how controversial his new project turns out to be: The First Bank of Antimatter. The "exhibit" (if such it can be called) opens today at the Modernism Gallery in San Francisco. According to the fine folks at Culture Lab:
Keats's vision is of an economy where the collateral is antimatter - in his words "the physical opposite of anything made with atoms, from luxury condos to private jets".
The bank will issue anti-money to the public, backed by antimatter that will be produced from 65 kilograms of potassium chloride held in the bank's vault. Statistically, around 0.012 per cent of the potassium will be potassium-40, a radioactive isotope with a half-life of 1.3 billion years, which sometimes decays by releasing a positron - the antiparticle of an electron.
You can even purchase your own anti-money by sending a check to The First Bank of Antimatter, c/o Modernism Gallery, 685 Market St., San Francisco, CA 94105, US. Although if you do... sucker! This is the epitome of caveat emptor.
Is what Keats does genuine art, or is he just some guy who's good at coming up with clever high profile ways to get the public riled up and garner a few headlines in the process? Time will tell. Beauty, after all, and artistic worth, are very much in the eyes of the beholder.
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