Michael Stevenson

The Fountain of Prosperity (Answers to Some Questions About Bananas)

2006

Plexiglass, steel, brass, aluminium, rubber, cork, string, concrete, water, pumps and fluorescent lamps

Not on view

This is a replica of the MONIAC, a hydraulic proto-computer that economist Bill Phillips created in 1949 while studying at the London School of Economics. Adjustable pipes and containers direct flows of water which illustrate the flows of capital in and out of a national economy. (A Fortune magazine article from 1952, displayed nearby, explains how the machine works.)

In the early 1950s, the Central Bank of Guatemala purchased a MONIAC to study economic dependency as it undertook a reform program meant to loosen the United States’ monopoly on banana exports, its most profitable industry. But in 1954, a US-backed coup d’état overthrew the Guatemalan government, and the MONIAC disappeared. Stevenson reconstructed the eccentric machine through extensive research on its whereabouts—comparing it to “the fountain of prosperity”—and the hopes placed in it.

Gallery label from

Chosen Memories, April 30–September 9, 2023

Provenance

Michael Stevenson, 2006
Vilma Gold Gallery, London
Colección Patricia Phelps de Cisneros, New York and Caracas, 2011
The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 2017

Medium Plexiglass, steel, brass, aluminium, rubber, cork, string, concrete, water, pumps and fluorescent lamps
Dimensions 96 7/16 × 61 13/16 × 43 11/16" (245 × 157 × 111 cm)
Credit Gift of Patricia Phelps de Cisneros through the Latin American and Caribbean Fund in honor of Gonzalo Parodi
Object number 686.2017
Department Media and Performance

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