Summary

An Italian artist, Salvatore Garau, sold an invisible sculpture titled "lo Sono" (I Am) for $18,300, sparking discussions on the nature of value, art, and the economy.

Abstract

The article discusses the recent sale of an invisible sculpture by artist Salvatore Garau for $18,300 at an auction by Art-Rite. The sculpture, named "lo Sono," comes with a certificate of authenticity and is intended to be displayed in a private space within specific conditions, emphasizing the power of imagination. This event is contextualized within a broader discussion of the economy, where value is seen as existing on a spectrum from real tangible assets to intangible concepts like vision and collective delusion. The sale of "lo Sono" is critiqued as potentially being part of a scam or money-laundering scheme, given the anonymity of the buyer and the parallels with other questionable high-value art sales. The article also reflects on the ethical implications of such expenditures, contrasting the price of the invisible art with the potential good that money could achieve if used to address global issues like hunger and disease. The author argues for a return to real value and criticizes the inflation of prices in the real economy due to the creation of artificial value through fiat money, credit creation, and speculative assets like cryptocurrencies and NFTs.

Opinions

The sale of the invisible sculpture is seen as emblematic of a fake economy where value is increasingly based on intangible and delusional concepts.
The author suggests that the art market, particularly high-priced auctions, may be involved in money laundering and insider deals.
There is a critique of the wealthy and their expenditures on luxury items, arguing that such money could be better spent addressing humanitarian issues.
The creation of artificial value through fiat money and credit is viewed as detrimental to the real economy and the poor, as it inflates prices and erodes purchasing power.
The author advocates for a focus on real value and criticizes the current trend of valuing nothing (like an invisible sculpture) over something of tangible worth.
The article implies that the rich may be trolling the public with absurdly priced items, highlighting a disconnect between the wealthy and the realities of the majority.

Someone Just Paid $18,300 For An Invisible Sculpture

The whole economy’s fake, so why not?

“You don’t see it but it exists; it is made of air and spirit.” — Salvatore Garau

The artist’s name is Salvatore Garau.

The auction house is Art-Rite.

The selling price is $18,300.

It comes with a certificate of authenticity to prove it’s real.

The sculpture’s name is lo Sono.

I Am.

But it isn’t.

Because the “sculpture” is invisible.

It doesn’t exist.

It is, as Jimmy Kimmel called it, a Blanksy.

“The vacuum is nothing more than a space full of energy, and even if we empty it and there is nothing left, according to the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, that nothing has a weight. Therefore, it has energy that is condensed and transformed into particles, that is, into us.” — Salvatore Garau

Believe it or not, lo Sono isn’t the first bit of nothingness this particular artist has “created.” Buddha In Contemplation was “exhibited” at the Piazza della Scala in Milan. Afrodite Cries is currently “on display” in front of the New York Stock Exchange.

The artist requires his newest “sculpture” to be displayed in a specific way:

in a private house
in a 5-by-5-foot square
no artificial lighting
no climate control
no obstructions

“It is a work that asks you to activate the power of the imagination,” the artist says. “It is a work that asks you to activate the power of the imagination, a power that anyone has, even those who don’t believe they have it.”

It sounds a lot like a Non-Fungible Token.

What I’m hearing is that Salvatore Garau understands how modern money delusion works.

Money exists on a spectrum

Picture the money spectrum with me:

On the far left is real value: Water, land, food, heat sources, power supplies, construction materials, skilled labor time. Not gold. Not crypto.

In the middle is violence: Government money, backed only by the threat of taxation, asset seizure, and imprisonment.

On the right is a vision: An idea, dream, myth, fiction that requires the collective delusion of at least two people to manifest itself as a tradeable currency.

Value → Violence → Vision.

The only three ways to give tradeable worth to a currency.

Or a piece of invisible art.

“I Am” is a scam

Have you noticed with all these absurdly-priced auctions that the buyer is almost always anonymous?

I think it’s mostly inside jobs. (We already know the fine art industry is a massive money-laundering fraud.)

Who bought lo Sono? Almost certainly someone with a vested interest.

Surely this invisi-sale benefits the owners of all previous Garau works. Surely this invisi-sale raises Garau’s notoriety and the prices he can command for all future works.

Same for David Hockney, after selling his NFT for $69 million.

Follow the money and I bet the anonymous buyer stands to benefit from more people buying NFTs on his or her exchange.

Do you know what gave it away?

69.

The same thing happened when Andy Samberb’s Palm Springs sold at Sundance for the record-breaking price of… $25,000,000.69.

Or when Rupert Murdoch’s corporate tax returns were: $364,364,000 in 1987. $464,464,000 in 1988. $496,496,000 in 1989. $282,282,000 in 1990.

The rich are just trolling us.

Art as tragedy

I feel embarrassed for the purchaser of lo Sono.

We shouldn’t be celebrating this kind of shameful stuff.

It would only be funny if it wasn’t so tragic.

$18,300 feeds 114 starving people for a year.
$18,300 buys 9,150 long-lasting insecticidal nets that will protect 16,470 people from getting malaria.
$18,300 de-worms 36,600 children and protects them from river blindness.

Now imagine what that $69 million NFT money could do. Or Jeff Bezos’s $500 million yacht money could do. Or the $32 trillion that the top 2,400 people have stashed offshore.

Wasting money at scale is sociopathic behavior.

The big picture

My wife met a billionaire one time. He came into her startup to meet with the executive team about acquiring the company. During the meeting, while trying to give a sales example, he grabbed a can of Coke and said, “What does a can of Coke sell for these days, eighteen or twenty bucks?”

His mental price schema was completely detached from the reality of the majority.

The problem with all these new fake forms of “value” is that they inflate the price of the real economy.

When governments print fiat money, it robs the poor by destroying their purchasing power.
When bankers are allowed to create credit out of thin air, it makes real estate completely unaffordable for the masses.
When gamblers pump Bitcoin or Tesla stock or NFTs or invisible artworks, they skew our perceptions of real value and wreak havoc on global prices.

We need to get back to reality and real value.

Nothing shouldn’t be worth more than something.

Air shouldn’t be worth more than a human life.

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