Carla Zaccagnini. Cuentos de Cuentas

Cuentos de Cuentas brings together a series of recollections from Zaccagnini’s childhood in Brazil and Argentina in the 1980s. Punctuated by childhood drawings and personal photographs, the stories are structured around specific objects—a tent, a jar, a vest, etcetera—that were pivotal in enabling secret economic transactions. Her research reflects on the old tactics and strategies necessary to keep and transport money when it was still an object to be kept safe, secret, and under wraps. Taking these transactions as points of departure, she reveals how the digital revolution has led to a radical departure from the traditional monetary exchange model. The replacement of the banknote as a tangible object through digitalization works in tandem with the logic of late capitalism: the disappearance of the unitary subject in a moment of high inflation, political incertitude, and social insecurity.