Hicham Khalidi
Authors
Diego Tonus and Huib Haye van der Werf
Roger Willems and Dongyoung Lee
English
Hardcover, 16 × 24 cm
ISBN: 9789492811660
Supported by
Italian Council Award 2018 – a competition ideated by the Directorate General for Contemporary Art and Architecture and Urban Peripheries (DGAAP) – organ of the Italian Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activities, to promote Italian contemporary art in the world.
Fragments of a Conversation with a Counterfeiter is a publication referring to Diego Tonus’s latest body of work, deriving from an assumed conversation between the artist and a forger (anonymous for practical reasons) revealing controversial thoughts related to contemporary systems that deal with the definition of value. The series contributes to a discussion about the transformation and transportation of value, questioning the valorisation of time and space in time of crisis. Each artwork is the visual translation by the artist of this supposed conversation. Tonus approaches the thoughts of the counterfeiter as if they were his intellectual property, questioning the ‘counter’ of counterfeiting and appropriating his ideas. In order to share the appropriated forger’s ideas with the international audience, to activate and perform them, the artist has registered the works as trade secrets at the Benelux Office for Intellectual Property.
This publication serves as a legal document and body of proof that Diego Tonus has registered the practices and strategies of Anonymous as his ideas in the register of the Benelux Office for Intellectual Property.