Collection: Paracharattein To Nomisma

In English, "Deface The Currency"

When Diogenes went to the Oracle at Delphi to ask how to live, he received the words "Παραχαράτειν το νόμισμα". While he did not interpret the words literally, he lived an ascetic life outside the constraints of conventional society and able to, well, see the bullshit. He started a movement to question, ruthlessly. To question the values of: Values, Traditions, Truths..., Everything; To Deface the Currency of Civilization.

When a coin is engraved I find the philosophical metaphors can be poignant, something about altering such a cold, hard, government-issued, physical manifestation of power, at the very least has a rebellious feeling.

I like to imagine my graver has a magic similar to the sunglasses in the John Carpenter's “They Live”. The glasses enable the wearer to see propaganda as it is, in the movie the glasses are put on and billboards are transformed to say “OBEY” “CONFORM” “BUY” he looks down at a man exchanging money which reads “THIS IS YOUR GOD” for a magazine telling him to “STAY ASLEEP.” Fun stuff, but it really touches on a truth, especially in this modern age. My graver has the ability to transform the propaganda inherent within these pennies, sometimes in relation to what the coin already speaks, sometimes in opposition to it, others entirely overriding it. But make no mistake, these pennies are not liberated from what they were, they are simply my propaganda now. 

These coins are sold randomly, Pokemon-card style, each one sewn into its own packet, dropped into a box and shaken up. Each coin is individually engraved by hand. There are no special requests, once sewn up and dropped in I have no clue which one is which, and the penny you receive will be entirely up to chance. Every Penny that has entered this collection can be found in the gallery above.