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Much has been written on the intertwined histories of art and money, from trompe-l'œil depictions of banknotes to so-called money art to the elements of trust and authenticity undergirding these arenas. Yet, what happens when an artwork representing paper money is inserted into the financial system itself? What mechanisms of monetary production and regulation are activated and revealed? In the 1980s and 1990s, artist JSG Boggs realized Boggs Bills — representations of banknotes that pulled the financial system and the laws regulating money into art, and likewise, pulled art into the machinery of finance and its governance. Alongside the more widely discussed modes of creative engagement such as intervention, culture jamming, and semiotic disobedience, I propose the term contrast agent to discuss the operations of Boggs Bills within the systems of art and law. This conceptualisation allows for a consideration of the laboratory-like mapping of the vectors of exchange performed by Boggs Bills as they weave through various bureaucratic systems. These works of art were injected into and circulated through different arenas of exchange, animating the bureaucracy that both constructs and regulates money. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholars and artists have long been interested in socially engaged artworks, particularly those involving civil disobedience. But what of the opposite approach? What of radical adherence? In the 1970s, California-based artist Lowell Darling realized a series of creative endeavors exploiting uncivil obedience, characterized by a conspicuous and hyperbolic compliance with established laws, rules, and mandates. Following the disallowance of proposed deductions to his 1969 federal income tax return, Darling—by way of projects such as the fictional Fat City School of Finds Arts—deconstructed the so-called hobby loss rule of the U.S. Tax Code by rigorously and ironically fulfilling those factors said to indicate a profit-seeking intent. In 1978, Darling mined the intricacies of electioneering norms and campaign finance by staging an insincere run for governor of California. In these projects, Darling mobilized a kind of legal medium for creative expression, manifesting a mode of art-making that departed from expectations about how art and law might interact and intersect within art practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]