queer money

Queer Money uses stamps to mark currency and relies on the flows of capitalism to spread widely, reaching far beyond its initial stamping. While the aim is political, the message is profoundly identity-based: each bill bearing the message “Queer Money” was held and owned by a queer person, potentially many.

The process seeks to display the spending power of the queer community, as well as the pervasive nature of their physical presence. It asks each person who sees, holds, and spends a bill to consider queer identity and in its traveling, it disturbs banal commercial interactions and startles individuals into a consciousness of the broader network of economic transactions.

It blurs the lines between “us” and “them” -- is the person bearing a bill stamped “Gay Money” gay themselves or merely a messenger? Where did the dollar come from? Who stamped it? This paper situates a specific case of Queer Money in Chicago in the 1980s within the broader literature regarding money in order to investigate currency chains as a queer spatial project, ultimately asking what a 2020 equivalent could be.