Liquid Currency Bar

Created by artist Zoe Williams, the Liquid Currency Bar is a temporary venue for performances and events at Dortmunder Kunstverein, from summer 2022 to March 2025.

The bar creates a parallel world, with its own laws. Its means of payment, the Liquid Currency, is a golden coin with the image of a gorgon's head which also ornates the bar with its spinning, dropping, and melting emblem. The currency plays on the idea of a liquid to subvert monetary value chains: Flowing consumption of urine-coloured liquids, bought in liquid currency, as a promise for pleasure - only for the liquids to be pissed out, returned to waste and water, the environment and ultimately back into our bodies. The excessive mix of gold rush and "golden shower" operates on the threshold between natural and artificial materials, between bodily experience and digital aesthetics, forging a conspiratorial community.

Zoe Williams (*1983 in Salisbury, lives in London and Marseille) works with sculpture, drawing, moving image and performance. Her works explore the reading and practice of rituals in contemporary societies and the influence of pressures of power, the politics of sex and the economics of production on our actions. They challenge notions of gender, the erotic, the artisanal, the magical, disgust and attraction, hedonism and excess.

Conzept: Zoe Williams
Décor / Costumes:  HYDRA (Anna Gloria Flores)
Soundtrack: Katie Shannon
Invited by: Rebekka Seubert

The Liquid Currency Bar is a queer-friendly venue and safe space. It will not only be used for bar service at all Kunstverein events, but will also be activated in 2024 by the artist, her guests and the cooperation with two Dortmund art collectives for performative, cinematic and musical evenings.

Program 2024 with the kind support of

Program 2022 with the kind support of

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