The Hidden Flow Currency Shop was  installed at our premisses at Roarsvej 6 in Copenhagen

Also shown at:
Capital(It Fails Us Now) at UKS, Oslo (NO), 2005. Curated by Simon Sheikh
Sparwasser HQ, Berlin (BRD), 2004. Curated by Lise Nellemann
Mediamarkt
HEAVEN, a process room for art, Stockholm (SE), 2004.

At these occasions the Hidden Flow Currency Shop took the form of:
Weight for pricing, lists of Material Intensity for raw material used for calculating the Hidden Flow Currency, price tags, and exchange boxes.

The shop visitors were requested to bring commodities which could be exchanged for ‘Hidden Flow’ Currency.  The currency was viable in The HIDDEN FLOW SHOP during opening hours of the shop/exhibition.

THE HIDDEN FLOW CURRENCY developed for this project was based on the notion of the Ecological Rucksack, a concept introduced by ‘The Wuppertal Institute for Climate, Environment and Energy’. The Ecological Rucksack signifies the collected Material Intensity; all the raw material, fuel and transport services that have been taken into use when the material or product was produced, minus the weight of the product.

Since the material intensity is not to be found in the final product, and never introduced in the economic sphere, economists describe it as hidden flows. The Hidden Flow Exchange project intends to function on a pedagogical as well as an operative level. The objective is to reflect on different value and economical systems and question that they are predominantly based on economical calculations.

Image above: Capital (it fails us now), exhibition at UKS, Oslo.

Throughout the exhibition Capital(It Fails Us Now) , the items; catalogues, books, magazines etc. for sale at UKS bookstore could no longer be purchased with Norwegian Crowns but merely with Hidden Flow Currency. This was the only viable currency at UKS for the period of the Capital show.

In order to purchase at the shop, one had to bring items, which were exchanged, for this currency. The exchanged items were then added to the stock of the shop.

Image below: Price tag at UKS