THE MILL OF BLOOD |2017-2018
Mill of Blood is a project carried out for dOCUMENTA14 in Kassel, Germany; it is the modified reproduction of a machine used in Latin America at the time of the colony in the coin minting process, which, in the case of dOCUMENTA, produced a hybrid between a metal coin and a cryptocurrency called TEIO.
Blood mills are old machines that used the physical force of animals or humans as fuel; they were installed in contexts where there was no other energy source but physical work. In the colonial period, three blood mills were dedicated to coin minting established in Mexico, Peru, and Bolivia. The project presented in Kassel is inspired by the mill of Bolivia. The mill of Bolivia was in the city of Potosí, in the foothills of Cerro Rico, at the height of more than 4000 meters above sea level. Its location had supposedly challenging climatological conditions in addition to poor oxygen. The difficult access and harsh conditions, in addition to the high energy expenditure required by the operation of the machine, caused the animals that worked on it to die very quickly. It is said that humans, natives/slaves were used instead of mules or oxen for more efficiency and cheaper. The exhaustive work was damaging to the body and undermined the spirit. I feel that gradually while working in the mill, the worker's flesh became the face of the king printed on the silver extracted from Cerro Rico. The machine found in Kassel did not operate from slave labor but from the participation of the tourists and visitors of dOCUMETA 14. Each time the center wheel of the mill was turned, a new coin was minted, and for each one of them, a new cryptocurrency called TEIO was mined through the computer system inbuilt into the Mill of Blood. This Cryptocurrency was designed to create a voting system. Each TEIO could be divided into 20,000 parts, each with the ability to certify and process the votes of one person. In total, 29,000 TEIOS were created, enough for a democratic system of 580 million people country.
Blood mills are old machines that used the physical force of animals or humans as fuel; they were installed in contexts where there was no other energy source but physical work. In the colonial period, three blood mills were dedicated to coin minting established in Mexico, Peru, and Bolivia. The project presented in Kassel is inspired by the mill of Bolivia. The mill of Bolivia was in the city of Potosí, in the foothills of Cerro Rico, at the height of more than 4000 meters above sea level. Its location had supposedly challenging climatological conditions in addition to poor oxygen. The difficult access and harsh conditions, in addition to the high energy expenditure required by the operation of the machine, caused the animals that worked on it to die very quickly. It is said that humans, natives/slaves were used instead of mules or oxen for more efficiency and cheaper. The exhaustive work was damaging to the body and undermined the spirit. I feel that gradually while working in the mill, the worker's flesh became the face of the king printed on the silver extracted from Cerro Rico. The machine found in Kassel did not operate from slave labor but from the participation of the tourists and visitors of dOCUMETA 14. Each time the center wheel of the mill was turned, a new coin was minted, and for each one of them, a new cryptocurrency called TEIO was mined through the computer system inbuilt into the Mill of Blood. This Cryptocurrency was designed to create a voting system. Each TEIO could be divided into 20,000 parts, each with the ability to certify and process the votes of one person. In total, 29,000 TEIOS were created, enough for a democratic system of 580 million people country.