La Monnaie vivante

La monnaie vivante is the title of an essay and a series of performative and photographic works promoted by Pierre Klossowski in 1970. Michel Foucault soon hailed it as the most important book of its time.

Excess, energy, dissolution: this is how Maurice Blanchot defines the body of our time after having read its lines.

Caught in this contradiction, Pierre Molinier had anticipated it with a series of photographs in which he equated the transvestite, fictional, artificial body with the work of art: "L'Oeuvre, le peintre et son fétiche".

 

But then, what can a body do? If everything is reduced to mere merchandise, how can we be a body that does not put exchange value before use value? Or is the problem value, evaluation, examination? Thus, this catalogue of organs aspires to be a body and becomes a singularity, a subject, a citizen. What then is a body?

 

Pedro G. Romero

September 15, 2025