For a collage artist, destruction is the first necessary step.
Your materials need to be broken down before they can be put back together in a new way.
Sometimes I stop thinking about it as a dollar bill. I just think about it as materials.
I have to remind myself sometimes that it's worth money. I have to remind myself what it means to
people. It's something that people worry about. It's something that people fight over. I think the
worth of a dollar bill and the taboo around destroying a dollar bill makes people pay more
attention to what it is that I'm doing than if I was using any other piece of paper. I tend to stick
to subject matters that are close to the currency, either issues having to deal with wealth or the
division of wealth, issues of American identity. It's wrapped up with capitalism. I mean, it's
wrapped up with the American dream. It's basically the single most popular piece of paper on the
planet. The Bureau of Printing and Engraving makes two billion to four billion of these things every
year. So the dollar bill is ostensibly the most successful publication ever printed. Anarchists
are certain I'm an anarchist because I cut up a favorite tool of the oppressor. Capitalists think
I'm a capitalist because I rubble in it. The object in question is essentially just a piece
of paper. Money and currency don't actually exist in the real world. They're just something that
we've made up.
