"... the work that holds the most direct claim to indicate the artists' position in regards to today's main concerns is Plus valoarea [Surplus Value](2009), their latest film, also realized on the occasion of the BAK exhibition. It underlines the inherent contradictions of the system of accumulation and loss and the Marxist belief in the primacy of the economic as the drive behind history. In pre-1989 Romania, students were required to take manual labor classes, involving mainly knitting for girls and wood and metal carving for boys. But at the end of the year, students were required to buy back their own manufactured objects, the price rising proportionately with the complexity of the carving or piece of knitwork. In Plus valoarea, the artists reproduce one of the first lessons in these classes, the manual whittling down of a small piece of metal into nothing. However, the retrieval of the memory of this pedagogical task goes beyond the absurdity of the economic measures of state-run socialist economies or the waste and losses of the expanding neoliberal capitalist ones. It asks some fundamental questions regarding labor, profit, and materiality and gets down to the bottom line - universally shared throughout systems or historical moments - a certain history of struggle."
excerpt from The History of Us All by Cosmin Costinas, Mona Vatamanu and Florin Tudor, monographic publication published by BAK and Post Editions, 2009.





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