Ricerche di S/Confine (Dec 2017)
Banca di Oklahoma: le incredibili avventure di una finanza patafisica dal 1968 a oggi
Abstract
The article reconstructs the events related to the artistic operation “Banca di Oklahoma”, an ironic venture capital company (first S.r.l. and then S.p.a.) based in Lugano founded by the artist Aldo Spoldi (born in Crema, 1950) in 1988, the apex of financial immateriality, with the aim of transforming the company activities in aesthetic operations. Already in 1968 Spoldi had founded the publishing house Trieb, who was the vehicle for the purchase of works by Andy Warhol and Alighiero Boetti. Now “Bank of Oklahoma” beats coin realizing the “Brunelli”, multiples by artists, signed by the same Spoldi and by Piero Gilardi, Mario Schifano, Bertozzi & Casoni and others to buy works by young artists (Stefano Arienti, Umberto Cavenago, Salvatore Falci and many others). In 1996 the company evolved into an educational project at the Brera Academy in Milan, where he teaches, and produces virtual characters that in 2007 will become the Scientific Committee of the newly formed Accademia dello Scivolo, an association also financed by the interest earned on the purchase on the stock exchange of securities on raw materials such as water and forests and that in 2016 issued ten-year and thirty-years bonds and coined a new paper money, the “Tallero Vascavolano”.
