Images become containers; containers become images: A Performance in Seven Movements, 2005

 

Images become containers; containers become images: A Performance in Seven Movements

2005

 

Conceptual Framework
This performance unfolds within a conceptual triangle: Max Weber’s reading of Calvinism as the ethical substrate of capitalism, John Calvin’s moral rehabilitation of profit through moderation and discipline, and Karl Marx’s critique of capital’s capacity to profit from catastrophe. The work weaves biography, theology, botany, and financial history into a live epistemological and aesthetic protocol.

 

 

 

Movement I: Grave Visit / Extraction

Location: Geneva, Switzerland
On the first day, I visited the unadorned grave of John Calvin, marked No. 707, in the Cimetière des Rois. The site itself resists monumentality, mirroring Calvin’s ascetic rejection of iconography. In a gesture of symbolic extraction, I collected a branch of Ligustrum vulgare (common privet), growing near the burial site—an act of vegetal sampling, situated between pilgrimage and appropriation.

Max Weber relates John Calvin to the emergence of a Protestant ethic that permits—and even values—economic activities such as lending money with interest, something that had been prohibited or morally condemned in medieval Catholic tradition. This connection appears mainly in his work «The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism», first published between 1904 and 1905.

1. Breaking with the traditional condemnation of interest
   In the Middle Ages, the Catholic Church condemned usury (charging interest on loans), based on biblical interpretations. Profit in itself was viewed negatively. However, John Calvin reinterpreted Scripture and argued that charging interest was not intrinsically immoral, as long as it was done in moderation and without exploiting those in need. This was a key shift in the moral view of money and its use.

2. Rationalization of work and profit
   Weber explains that Calvinism promoted a worldview in which hard work, discipline, and the accumulation of wealth were signs of being «chosen» by God. Within the framework of predestination (a core Calvinist doctrine), believers could not know whether they were saved, so they looked for external signs—such as economic success and morally austere living—as confirmation of their «election.»

3. Moral validation of lending and capital
   In this new context, lending money with interest becomes a rational and legitimate activity, even virtuous when done responsibly. It is part of the ethos of emerging capitalism: not only permitted, but seen as an ordered, planned act useful for economic development.

Weber shows that Calvinist thought profoundly changed the view of money, interest, and labor. What was once a sin became a virtue, provided it was embedded in a framework of rationality, self-discipline, and ascetic morality. Thus, the economy ceased to be in conflict with religion and began to merge with ethics, preparing the cultural and ideological ground for modern capitalism.

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Movement II: Botanical Intervention / DNA Extraction

Location: Hotel Room, Geneva
Within a sterile setting—a generic hotel room, echoing the impersonal logic of global capitalism—I conducted a basic DNA extraction from the Ligustrum specimen. This laboratory-like act evoked both Calvinist precision and the mechanization of life processes. Here, Calvin’s reformative spirituality meets post-genomic materiality.

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Movement III: Transmutation / Chromatic Alchemy

Location: Cologne, Germany
Back in my studio in Köln, I initiated a chromatic transmutation. The extracted DNA was blended with Sambucus nigra (elderberry) dye, a historically potent pigment and medicinal agent, and traditional oil paint. This hybrid preparation—organic, symbolic, and technological—became the material substrate for the pictorial phase. It was both painting medium and biosemiotic archive.

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Movement IV: Marxist Re-Inscription / Portraits of the Unrecorded

Drawing on Karl Marx’s account of the Vulcan Street fire (Chapter 25, Capital, Volume I), where tragedy becomes surplus, I imagined two anonymous victims of that fire—lives erased by both bureaucracy and economic abstraction. Their absent presences were re-embodied through two paintings of heads, rendered with the DNA-oil-elderberry mixture. The brushwork recalled the gestural instability of memory under erasure.

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Marcello Mercado

Unknown I

42cm x 59,4cm, mixed media on paper

2005

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Marcello Mercado

Unknown II

42cm x 59,4cm, mixed media on paper

2005

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Movement V: Flames / Asphalt Syntax

Marcello Mercado

The Young Johannes Calvin I

60cm x 80cm, mixed media on paper

2005

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Movement VI: Digital Collapse / Synthetic Voice

The six paintings (2 heads, 6 flames) were digitized and algorithmically blended in Photoshop to produce a single composite image. This visual amalgam was then transposed into text code—an abstraction of an abstraction—and read aloud by a synthetic voice. The result was a sonic surface of illegibility: a voice devoid of human inflection, enacting the alien logic of post-human narrative systems. Audio excerpt of the text turned into sound:

 

 

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Movement VII: Performance as Algorithm / Systemic Entanglement/ A system of thought

The performance was concluded by drafting an algorithm—a conceptual code—structured on the interlocking logic of Weber + Calvin + DNA + Capital + System. This algorithm was not executable by machines but by thought: a heuristic choreography meant to be read, interpreted, or enacted across disciplines. It was both score and residue, ethics and critique.