THE PRINT
30 x 20 inches, drawn at 18,000 pixels across, which is 600 pixels per inch at this size. The detail holds closer than your eye can resolve from across the room. This one has to be walked up to.
Limited edition of 10, signed and numbered, on Hahnemühle German Etching 310gsm.
It ships rolled around the outside of a rigid core, wrapped in Kraft paper and layers of bubble wrap, then boxed with foam protection. If you want a specific edition number, email me before you check out. First asked, first held.
Each includes a certificate of authenticity timestamped on the Bitcoin blockchain via Verisart.
Bitcoin accepted at checkout.
THE CONCEPT
Fiat is Latin for let it be done. A decree, issued once, with nobody asked. Ludus is a game. The Romans used the same word for a school, and for the schools where gladiators trained. The biggest of those, the Ludus Magnus, stood right next to the Colosseum.
A game is only fair when everybody playing can read the rules and nobody can change them halfway through. Fiat Ludus. Let there be a game: one where the house writes the rules, changes them whenever it wants, and signs you up before you're old enough to read them.
It's built on Bruegel's Children's Games, painted in 1560: a town square packed with children playing different games, and not one adult anywhere. Mine has adults and children, and the ones running things are skulls with a $ on them.
In the middle, under arches lettered FIAT, the house posts its rules on the wall: THE HOUSE ALWAYS WINS. TOKENS HAVE NO CASH VALUE. PRIZES SUBJECT TO CHANGE. RULES MAY CHANGE WITHOUT NOTICE. NO HOARDING TOKENS. Number four eats the other four, and it's the one the dollar runs on. Just behind the RULES post out front, a man with his back to you wears the other kind of rule on his shirt: 21 MILLION, THE ONLY RULE THEY CAN'T MOVE.
Ludus also means school, so the house runs one: LUDUS MAGNUS. Its sign says ENROLL, AGES 5 TO 65, EASY LOANS, APPLY NOW, which is first grade to retirement. Down the slope, a CREDIT machine pours dog biscuits stamped DEBT between two posts lettered GOOD and BOY, and a hopscotch court runs from $1.00 down to DEBT, one hop at a time. In the corner of the chalkboard, a masked kid has written PLAN ₿.
The bottom of the square is the arena, its rim carved MORITURI TE SALUTANT: those who are about to die salute you. Down in the pit, a towering $ skull robot marked RECRUITER holds out an ENROLL form to a masked young man, and an open shackle is bolted to the floor at its feet. Over the pit hang birdcages tagged 6102, the order that made Americans hand in their gold in 1933. One door is open, and the orange bird is out and flying.
The mask is in the game too. The kids crawling after the biscuits wear it, and so does the young man reaching for the clipboard. Knowing the dollar is rigged has never stopped anybody from clocking in or taking the loan.
One price in the square goes the other way. A flat of carrots has 7,500 crossed out, then 5,000, and the chalk now says 3,000 SATS. That's what happens to prices when nobody can print more of the money.
Some of the words only show up once you're close enough to fog the glass, like OFFER ENDED AUG 15, 1971 along the bottom of a poster, or WAIT HERE under KYC on a sign smaller than a postage stamp.
The full walkthrough, object by object, is in the Fiat Ludus essay.
TEN DECREES
Ten of the most crowded and most furious paintings Bosch and Bruegel ever made, redrawn for the fiat age. One every two weeks, from August 29th to January 3rd, the Genesis Block anniversary. Nine of the titles are orders. The last one is ours. Better money, better world.
