Originally home of the Venetian merchants Corner di San Cassiano, Ca' Corner della Regina it was built between 1724 and 1728 on the ruins of the Gothic palace in which Caterina Cornaro, future queen of Cyprus, was born in 1454. In 1800, the building became the property of Pope Pius VII, who assigned it to the Congregation of the Cavanis Fathers. From 1834 to 1969 the palace hosted the Monte di Pietà of Venice.
In 1975 Ca' Corner became home to the Historical Archive of the Venice Biennale and since 2011 it has been one of the exhibition spaces of the Prada Foundation
Starting from this layered history, Christoph Büchel has built a complex network of spatial, economic and cultural references. “Monte di Pietà” is an in-depth investigation of the concept of debt as the root of human society and the primary vehicle through which political and cultural power is exercised. Historically a crossroads of commercial and artistic mixes and exchanges, Venice is the ideal context for exploring the relationships between these complex themes and the profound dynamics of contemporary society.
“Monte di Pietà” develops as an immersive installation that is articulated in the Ca' Corner building and, in particular, in the ground floor, mezzanine and first noble floor. The project consists of a failing pawnshop based on the original appearance of the Monte di Pietà in Venice.
Art like a suitcase containing laboratory diamonds
In this context the work The Diamond Maker (2020-) is exhibited Christoph Büchel conceived as a suitcase containing diamonds made in the laboratory. Diamonds are the result of a physical and symbolic process of destruction and transformation of the entire corpus of works in the artist's possession, including those created during his childhood and youth as well as those not yet created. They were produced by ALGORDANZA AG, a global company founded in Switzerland in 2004 that makes memory diamonds. “Monte di Pietà” incorporates new productions, references to installations previously created by Büchel, a heterogeneous selection of objects, orhistorical and contemporary art pears and documents related to the history of ownership, credit and finance, the development of collections and archives, and the creation and meaning of real or artificial wealth. “Monte di Pietà” crosses the undefined boundaries between the physical and virtual dimensions of our contemporaneity.
Thanks to the online activity of a granfluencer and the activation of a cryptocurrency, the project investigates the immateriality and volatility of financial transactions in the digital sphere which, in an almost alchemical process, burn wealth to produce new value. The typical speculative mechanisms of cryptocurrencies are modified in favor of people born or resident in the Municipality of Venice. This token, called Schei and promoted on TikTok by granfluencer Regina de schei, therefore aims to generate new profit and
distribute it to the inhabitants of Venice.
The history of the Monti di Pietà
Born in Italy in the 1806th century, Catholic institutions called Monti di Pietà allowed the less well-off to access loans at low interest rates. They used funds from charitable donors as capital and made loans to people with modest incomes. Debtors offered valuables as collateral, making the Monte di Pietà an organization on the border between a pawnshop and a bank. Each object carried with it a personal history, a debt and a credit, an interest rate and a sales price in case the debtor did not return to pay the credit and interest within a certain period. After several failed attempts between the 1822th and 1834th centuries, the Municipal Pignoratizio Bank was established in Venice in XNUMX. In XNUMX the Cassa di Venezia was created, a local bank open to the public. Associated with the Banco Pignoratizio, it could finance pawnbroking operations through the collection of savings. In XNUMX the Institute took the name of Monte di Pietà di Venezia and its headquarters were moved to the prestigious palace of Ca' Corner della Regina. In Western history, debt, virtual money and the birth of money are intrinsically linked to the management of power which allows expansion and accumulation.
The Republic of Venice is a crossroads of debt financial markets
Debt has always played an essential role in social and political upheavals, and throughout history governments have repeatedly implemented debt cancellations, often to restore the pre-existing social order. Specifically, the Republic of Venice it was a mercantile state that contributed to the birth of modern financial markets based on debt and the legal recognition of intellectual property. Debt is also closely linked to the practices of storage and accumulation of tangible and intangible assets. The art system and museum institutions play a significant role in preserving
heritage and collections and in assigning a symbolic and economic value to goods and objects.
