Ileana Tounta Center of Contemporary Art, Athens, 1999

Extract from the text Manolis Baboussis and the detective’s gaze

Catalogue from Athen’s National Museum of Contemporary Art

<…American sociologist Alvin Toeffler analyzed in depth, the transience from industrial materialistic society – an obsessed producer of goods, objects but also of images destined to move about – to the new electronic, immaterial society. In his book The Third Wave he profoundly analyzes the mechanisms of immaterialization of post-consumption society. He follows, for example, the course of money – object of exchange – since the phase of the exchange of goods to currency and present time multinational companies and globalized society. Coins and banknotes are becoming extinct and are being replaced by credit cards and personal identification numbers, which

provide access to our accounts. Notably, there are certain companies that issue their own credit cards and carry out interior monetary transactions for their clients, in fact they somehow issue currency – a privilege so far attributed exclusively to the state.

While the world of global communication of entertainment offers pleasant comfort of all types and colours, a pervasive network of supervised and interlinked institutions has created a system of management and control, which most of the times evades our perception and immediate attention, remaining undisturbed, so that it can control almost everything.

It is difficult for a photographer to depict something so impalpable as immaterialization. It is possible that his familiarization with the clues of the invisible has favoured Baboussis to find the thread’s end in such Babel of contradictory signals, where the most significant things, are often the less visible. In order to describe the evolution of such a condition, Baboussis discovers a new symbol, a totem, with which we deal so often every day that we hardly even notice it. This monument of our immaterialized daily life, in one of the most globalized versions in our everyday monetary transactions, is nothing more than the ATMs (Automated Cash Machines). In 1997, Baboussis photographed frontally and in colour the “busts” of automatic cash distributors, which stand precisely as the interlink between the materialistic society of urban centres – the ones managing money – and the new mechanisms which exercise and control global economy through the electronic signal and pulse of bits. Practically, the ATMs are there in order to provide a specific service, no other than allowing people to have cash at their disposal at any time, without having to keep it in their pockets but on the contrary, by leaving it with the bank. Symbolically, behind the ATM lies the bank institution, as well as global electronic control. In a world, which has born and accepted globalization, human beings lose their identity as autonomous personalities and become digits, personal identification numbers, abstract entities. By displaying the ATMs – that is, by using them as a visible point of reference of an invisible process, away from circulation of capital which covers our financial life 24 hour basis – Baboussis invites us to reflect over the reality, where we find ourselves submerged: a reality extensively invisible, therefore unable to capture on camera. As it suits his photographic style, he discovers an object in common use, a familiar condition to the man on the street, and he selects it as both a natural point of reference and as a stimulus that could lead us all to more generalized thoughts. He continues his exploration of the associations which define financial and monetary value on one hand and invisible objects on the other, which they are nevertheless considered to be precious, as they are hidden in the crypt of a bank basement. Behind the metal shutters, lie the objects that each owner considers as valuable. If we compare the first images that Baboussis captured in mental clinics with the recent ones taken in bank basements, we realize that they are endowed with perfect circularity. The forms of the institutions constitute the visual level. “Value” is absent. The look jumps from the point of departure and, as it is hindered, returns towards the direction of the artist and of ourselves: we gaze together with him. The look recommences exploring the visual level and finally folds in its internal reserves to wonder what is missing here, and what lies beyond this very image….)

DANIELA PALAZZOLI

Contemporary Art Historian, Exhibition Curator

I could have exhibited real ATMs instead of 24 photos of their Bust. I did this a little later in 2008, for another similar project, in a wasteland in the Keramikos district of Athens, as part of the REMAP Project. I exhibited a real two-tonne safe that had hanged itself, committed suicide. Unfortunately I wasn’t lucky enough to have such sponsors for the D.A.B., although I did ask for financial support from the association of Greek banks!
On the other hand, the photos of the D.A.B., these busts as a two-dimensional whole, function differently: the photo encourages concentration and observation of detail, and transforms the D.A.B. into contemporary ecclesiastical temples.
I remember when I first exhibited them in 1999 at Ileana Tounta’s Centre for Contemporary Art in Athens. Ileana was still having a big New Year’s Eve party in the gallery’s two large rooms. All of Athens’ seated around round tables with white tablecloths, waiters bent over them, and photos of the D.A.B. on the surrounding walls – it was a terrible image. That evening I came up with the idea – never realised – of hanging my busts (D.A.B.) on the walls of the large hall where the traditional meals of the political parties are held every year during the Thessaloniki trade fair. Only the symbols of each party would change, the rooms would remain the same with the same tables and the same photos of the D.A.B. hanging on the walls…
What’s more, I always have to explain why I photograph such subjects. I remember one guest at the gallery dinner, a supreme judge, who asked me why I aestheticize a utilitarian object like ATMs? In Berlin and New York, or in Paris when I was arrested by the police, I also had to explain to them why.
When, later on, at a biennial photo exhibition on the theme of religion, I proposed the D.A.B. as symbols of the new religion, I was told to follow the usual practice of identifying the theme with the image.
ATM . as symbols of the new religion, I was told to follow the usual practice of identifying the theme with the image, so when we talk about the church, we show its established symbols. Perhaps if we made deposits and withdrawals of feelings; of love, friendship, jealousy, arrogance, intolerance, hypocrisy… perhaps it would be interesting
to have a machine for distributing them.

Point Contemporaine , interview 2018, by Maria Xylopoulou