Description
Liberty Equality Fraternity
Conceptual photographic research
September 2017 | Variable dimensions
The French republican motto spread across golden sand, but the words were not engraved in marble as on the facades of town halls and schools, no, they were constructed with American dollar bills, hundreds of George Washington bills stacked arranged aligned to form these three sacred words that the French Republic had proclaimed since the French Revolution of seventeen hundred eighty-nine – Liberty Equality Fraternity, secular trinity supposed to replace the Christian trinity, universal values that were to guide the nation and inspire the entire world toward more justice and human dignity.
September two thousand seventeen, fifty-five years old, fifteen and a half years in France, and this image spat out all the derision I felt seeing what these words had become, how financial capitalism had emptied them of their substance and filled them with dollars, how the French Republic continued to display them proudly on its public buildings while in the concrete daily reality money dictated who was free who was equal who benefited from fraternity and who was excluded from it. American green bills not euros note well, because it was the dollar that really dominated the world economy, it was Wall Street that set the pace, it was American capitalism that had imposed itself everywhere even in France despite its tradition of public service and social protection.
The sand beneath the words spoke of the instability the precariousness the fragility of these values that were no longer anchored in the rock of deep convictions but placed on shifting sand that could collapse at any moment under the next financial crisis the next stock market crash the next recession that would sweep away these fine words and reveal what everyone already knew – that Liberty Equality Fraternity were nothing more than marketing slogans for tourists, ideals betrayed daily by neoliberal policies that privatized profits and socialized losses, that dismantled labor law in the name of competitiveness, that reduced social budgets to repay debt contracted with financial markets.
Liberty – freedom reduced to market freedom, freedom to undertake to fire to relocate to speculate, while the fundamental freedoms of citizens shrunk under anti-terrorist laws permanent state of emergency generalized surveillance. September two thousand seventeen and France still lived under state of emergency two years after the Bataclan, exceptional measures become normal, police controls searches house arrest without judicial warrant, security prioritized over freedom, and nobody really protested because fear had won, terrorism had succeeded in making us voluntarily renounce our freedoms in the name of our protection.
Equality – equality proclaimed while inequalities exploded, the rich always richer the poor always poorer, the Gini coefficient increasing year after year, the CAC 40 CEOs earning three hundred times the average salary of their employees, heirs accumulating fortunes without ever working while poor workers held two three jobs to pay their rent. Equality before the law perhaps theoretically but certainly not equality before justice, the rich had the best lawyers avoided prison even for serious crimes, the poor went to jail for stealing a smartphone or dealing a few grams of cannabis, double standard, class justice that daily denied this principle of equality engraved on all facades.
Fraternity – fraternity replaced by generalized competition, every man for himself and the market for all, social Darwinism where the fittest survived and the others died in general indifference. September two thousand seventeen and French society fragmented into communities that no longer spoke to each other, rich in their nice neighborhoods poor in their suburbs, whites blacks arabs asians each in their corner, native French and immigrants who looked at each other with suspicion, national fraternity replaced by identity retreat, and politicians exploited these divisions instead of repairing them, Marine Le Pen rising in polls promising to close borders expel foreigners protect « our » identity against « them », us versus them rhetoric that destroyed all possibility of universal fraternity.
The dollar bills that formed the letters created this effect of depth of volume, they stacked created shadows, and this three-dimensionality showed the thickness of money that had interposed itself between ideals and their realization, layers and layers of dollars that separated what the Republic claimed to be from what it really was, screen of green bills that hid the truth – that in a capitalist society freedom was proportional to the capital one possessed, equality a convenient fiction to maintain social peace, and fraternity a luxury one could only afford when it did not affect our economic interests.
And using American dollars specifically was not innocent, it was acknowledging that France had lost its economic and political independence, that it followed the directives of Brussels which followed the directives of Washington which followed the directives of Wall Street, cascade of submissions that emptied national sovereignty of all meaning, and Liberty Equality Fraternity became Americanized neoliberalized financialized values, contemporary translation that really meant « freedom for capital to circulate everywhere, equality of all before the market that judges us, fraternity between shareholders who share the same class interests. »
The golden sand looked like gold itself, precious metal that has always obsessed humanity, and this golden color recalled that money had become our new religion, In God We Trust printed on every dollar but really In Money We Trust, absolute faith in the power of money to solve everything to buy everything to arrange everything, and the three words Liberty Equality Fraternity wrote themselves in this language now, translated into financial terms, measured in dollars and euros and GDP growth and stock market performance.
September two thousand seventeen and Emmanuel Macron had just been elected president in May, former Rothschild banker who perfectly embodied this fusion between the Republic and Finance, who promised to liberate the French economy by abolishing the wealth tax by facilitating layoffs by reforming labor law, president of the rich as his opponents already nicknamed him, and he defended happy globalization liberal progressivism this ideology that dressed up capital’s interests with the vocabulary of republican values, that proclaimed Liberty Equality Fraternity while serving the interests of the most fortunate.
The bills placed on the sand would be carried away by wind or tide, temporality of this ephemeral construction that showed that nothing was permanent, neither money that could evaporate in a crash nor values that could be betrayed by those who proclaimed them loudest, and perhaps that was the final message – these three magnificent words Liberty Equality Fraternity were worth nothing in themselves, they were worth only what we made of them concretely daily, and if we accepted that they be written with dollars on sand then we accepted that they be nothing but empty words, hollow slogans repeated mechanically without real commitment to embody them in policies that would really give freedom to the oppressed equality to the exploited and fraternity to all those excluded from the capitalist feast.
Liberty Equality Fraternity in September two thousand seventeen, and the derision was complete bitter necessary, because the French Republic continued to drape itself in these sublime values while systematically betraying them, and I fifty-five years old fifteen and a half years in France constructed these words with dollars on sand to show the imposture, to visualize the corruption of ideals by money, to cry that the emperor has no clothes even if nobody wanted to hear it, Liberty Equality Fraternity constructed with American banknotes that would be carried away by the next wind of financial crisis, leaving just traces in the golden sand like unkept promises, September two thousand seventeen forever.
Cornel Barsan
September 2017
