WUNDERSCHEIN

When and how does a piece of paper or an artwork acquire an exchange value? How is its value determined and put into practice?

Commissioned by CIRCUIT Artist Film and Video Aotearoa New Zealand, WUNDERSCHEIN is an installation by French artist Guillaume Cailleau, featuring a collaboration with New Zealand artist Matilda Fraser. Focusing on the physicality of money—especially notes—the project models, imitates and fabricates money to address ideas of value in finance and art.

The title gestures to the complex responses inspired by money. While sounding very close to Wunderschön (beautiful), the title is a German neologism composed from "Wunder" (wonder) and "Schein" (which can be translated as a "bill," "glow," or "pretense"). The exhibit includes an opening night event in which a team of printers will produce currency onsite which can be used at the Audio Foundation during the month of the exhibition. While not seeking to directly represent state-sanctioned currency, the "money" produced onsite at the opening addresses the value of labour in comparison to what is produced. WUNDERSCHEIN will also feature 16mm film, video and static objects.

Guillaume Cailleau (born in 1978 in Saumur) is a Berlin-based French artist and filmmaker who is CIRCUIT’s international artist in residence for 2018-19. Experimenting with duration, multiple exposures, colour separation and manually treated single images, his work is influenced by the American avant-garde and performative practices in Expanded Cinema. In 2014 Cailleau was awarded a Silver Bear for his short film Laborat at the Berlin Film Festival. He has worked collaboratively with film and sound artists including Ben Russell, Werner Dafeldecker and Timo Kreuser. For WUNDERSCHEIN he will present a new collaboration with Matilda Fraser, an artist and writer based in Wellington, New Zealand.