At the Tips of Your Fingertips (Towards a Clean Money Culture), 2007

There can be a subtle beauty to futile actions. Within the context of a global bank that handles millions of dollars each day, Ana Prvacki sets up a money cleaning service that cleanses and "purifies" one note at a time through the use of specially branded wet wipes. Setting up the UBS space to test demand for her new product, Prvacki enters into an ongoing collaboration with the general public. As a project, this fits perfectly within her broader lifestyle consultancy, Ananatural Production, which she founded in 2003 to explore the aesthetics of consumer goods, as well as the propagation of ideas, brands, or ?mantras? that are designed to frame a way of living. Work embodies lifestyle, and an obsession with cleanliness is at the core of both. While consumers spend millions of dollars on attractive beauty products that contain harmful chemicals and colorants, Prvacki?s mail-order catalogue offers solutions such as a papaya face wash or a soap/soup bar that can be used both as a body cleanser and as a nourishing meal. These are recipes, suggestions and instructions for experiences that are both physical and psychological.

In cleaning each note by hand in an almost ritualistic way, Prvacki provides her clients with money that is fresh enough to use as a face wipe. But in doing so within the context of the UBS lobby, she becomes a kind of institutional Sisyphus, momentarily achieving the goal of cleanliness and then immediately failing as the note becomes ?contaminated? on receipt by its owner. Given that some believe the actual value of the note may also be diminished through the act of cleaning, the poetry of the piece lies in the sheer absurdity of the endeavor.

Anne Barlow