On November 5 and 6, Ten Decrees goes up on the main stage at Bitcoin Amsterdam. All five pieces released so far get the big screens. Bitcoin Magazine ran Dennis Koch's interview with me about the series on October 27, Ten Decrees: Old Masters, New Money.
Dennis asked about the decree the series answers, Nixon closing the gold window on August 15, 1971, and about why the titles are Latin and the tenth one changes who's speaking.
Bosch and Bruegel figured out how to show a whole society going wrong at once, hundreds of figures deep, where the point only shows up when you add them all together. Or as I put it to Dennis, "You don't look at a Bruegel, you search it." Every Decree is built to be read the same way, up close, and the prints hold that detail at 30 x 20 inches.
A lot of the argument sits in the lettering. In Fiat Moria the vault doors read WE PRINT / YOU PAY. In Fiat Ludus a $ skull teaches beside a chalkboard that says 2% IS HEALTHY and INFLATION IS TRANSITORY, and a kid is chalking PLAN ₿ underneath.
As I told Dennis, "The words carry the message so the people don't have to." Most of the people wear my mask, and a ₿ on a masked forehead means that person's noticed. "Knowing the money is broken doesn't make one a saint." The pieces show a way out and leave it to each of them whether to take it.
The stage
At Bitcoin Amsterdam each piece runs as its own fifteen-second sequence across the main stage. The center wall carries the piece itself. One side screen opens on the Bosch or Bruegel it's built on, and the other pulls details in close, the ones you'd normally have to walk up to the print to find.
Bosch took his name from 's-Hertogenbosch, a train ride south of Amsterdam. Amsterdam itself opened the Wisselbank in 1609, a public bank whose money traded above the coins it stood for. In 1790 it came out that the bank had been quietly lending to the Dutch East India Company and the city, and it declared itself insolvent that same year.
Bitcoin Magazine first wrote about my work in March 2020, when David Hollerith covered my propaganda posters in How Propaganda Art Can Spread the Message of Bitcoin.
The sixth Decree, Fiat Fames, is issued on November 7, the day after Amsterdam. The first five each have their own write-up: Furia Fiat, Fiat Lucrum, Fiat Palea, Fiat Ludus and Fiat Moria. The whole series is laid out in the Ten Decrees overview, and the prints, signed and numbered editions of 10, are on the Ten Decrees page.
Better money, better world.
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