Review: Taryn Simon, Paperwork and the Will of the Capital
Taryn Simon’s exhibition “Paperwork and the Will of Capital” presented itself as a group of archival style photo and sculpture works that documented agreement meetings in international juridical history; it embodied the intersection of art and law. For the series, Simon’s recreated bouquets presented the instances world leaders were brokering deals. She selected countries that were part of the Bretton Woods Conference. She then photographed the bouquets, and paired them with text summarizing the historical context and archiving the species of plant. The text was written as an elegy, which in frame with the bouquet read as a lament. Clearly, the work did not simply record the pivotal moments but within the archival methodology effectively reacted to it and highlighted the artifice of both the impossible to nature bouquets and the meetings respectively.
Taryn Simon. Bratislava Declaration. Bratislava, Slovakia, August 3, 1968. From the series
Paperwork and the Will of Capital, 2015. Archival inkjet print in mahogany frames with text in windowed compartment on archival herbarium paper. 85 × 73 1/4 × 2 3/4 inches framed (215.9 × 186.1 × 7 cm). © Taryn Simon
On entering the gallery space there were indicators of a predominant legal theme in the exhibit. The title “Paperwork and the Will of Capital” had layers of suggestion; “paperwork” which initially indicated the artistic medium (photography and text) of the series, additionally recalled documents in an office, paperwork contrived, for example, in the creation of a contract, suggesting these paperwork photographs may serve as paperwork in the documentation of an understanding between parties. Following, “Capital” too has many interpretations. The capital of a place, of course, is generally the seat of government for a country or region. A capital crime is one that can result in the death penalty. Capital in language marks the beginning of a sentence. And probably most notably in this case, capital is wealth in the form of money. Interestingly, the classic view of monetary capital is that it has no will, that the invisible hand will correct any attempt to put an agenda on it. The will of the capital is dispersed over the capital holders, no one capitalist can fully exert their personal will. Capital’s only real “will” is to accrue interest through its productive use. In the case of this exhibit, the Bretton Woods Conference set up the system through which capital is still being put to use now.
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