This is all going to be worth something, someday (2018)
Single-channel HD video, 11:27 mins
Sound composition: Nicholas Stueklin
Camera and editing: Beth Dillon
During a three-month residency at the Embassy of Foreign Artists, Geneva, Beth Dillon went undercover as Micheline - mobility agent, surveillance professional, art spy - to investigate the mysterious circulation of precious art objects within the Geneva Free Port storage and trading systems. The Free Port facilities are part of a global network of high security warehouses that house extensive collections of items of immense value including works by artists such as Picasso, Syrian artifacts, Roman antiquities, luxury cars, jewels and wine. Goods stored within the Free Port are technically in transit, and can be stored indefinitely in this state by collectors who wish to accumulate value on their investment assets while taking advantage of tax exemptions.
The three-part video stages the research-in-residence process as a detective thriller. Acts of scavenging, stalking and surveillance explore parallels and differences between the movements of nomadic artists - traveling constantly between sites of production and display in the global art market - and the circulation of art objects through systems and zones of opportunistic statelessness.
All you objects made found bought sold traded stolen shipped stocked sent underground guarded by rifles smuggled in pockets scanned by cameras digitally verified accumulating value gathering interest waiting in
the dark waiting to be seen, (2018)
An installation of found objects, stolen materials and recycled fabrics gathered during an undercover investigation of the Geneva Free Ports, installed in six glass display cases opposite the free ports site.
View of an intervention in public space, Cantonal Office of Statistics, Detention and Security, Rue des Acacias, Geneva, March 2018
