Toon Fibbe

audiovisual - economics - artistic research - performance - writing

The driving force of Toon Fibbe's (rotterdam1987) practice lies in the thinking, writing, acting and enacting of characters. It is this activity that spawns objects, texts, fashion, performance and installations.
Fibbe's work deals with finance, by departing from the perspective of characters he converts the abstractions of finance into unexpected theatrical images, dripping sculptures and installations in which finance begins to scream, bankers walk on heels and derivatives start to bleed.
Fibbe aims to make the difficult to grasp and abstract underpinning of finance felt, not through rational analysis - but through bodily and visceral imagery. In his work the body becomes a medium through which the abstractions of finance are made visible. He shows how we are all intimately linked to finance. How it moves through us and puts a price to the houses we live in, the energy we consume and the food we ingest - turning even our intestines into a testament of the global financial system

To model arbitrage - A group of stylishly clad sculptures donning wigs, glitters, patterns, heels and stripes. They signal to each other using 3d printed hands. These signals -known as arbs- don’t originate from the world of fashion or popculture but rather from the chaotic environment of the Chicago trading floors. In the constant competition for speed and visibility on the market floor these hand signals were faster than spoken word. The hands are made from 3d scans of traders performing the signals. They form an archive of a language that has become obsolete; in a time when trading has become digital and the body has been replaced by algorithms. The sculptures are brightly coloured - the stripes and patterns reference the original clothing worn on the stock market.