MERCY IS A USURER...
AND MAGIC IS THE REAL ECONOMY

ECCL is a company working in transactions of indulgences. Every sale is a negotiation and all transactions require the signing of a contract.  Our garments are hand made by debtors for debtors.  Let’s be daring. 

ONE ALWAYS OWES IN FLESH...
ARE YOU ENTITLED TO MERCY? 



SPECULATE!
WE ARE ALL MISERS... 

... Marx was very close to understanding that you cannot have economy without theology, or as Benjamin said, “Kapitalismus als Religion.” We have rephrased Benjamin’s fragment to say “Debt as religion.”  In the mid 1970’s, Western central banks were forbidden from coining interest free money to ease the burden of debt on the public. Western countries were then forced to go to financial markets to service their deficits. We are another degree removed from Luther’s fight against usury, now fully encompassed by it. Debt is a chronic condition we are born into. The German “schulden” (guilt) shares the same root as “schuld” (debt). We are all born guilty, because “All debtors are guilty and responsible in the eyes of capital.”

Superstition: It is believed that one risk can be canceled with a more daring risk; a double negative (debt and speculation) becomes a positive (profit). Magic is the real economy, and every reckless dare will be vindicated. The magic force which recuperates the debt through daring, is mercy.

    Having wealth is a sign of mercy, (cf. Max Weber) and           therefore deserves mercy and … even not actually having     wealth but a huge deficit and debt equally deserves 
    mercy given ones position of power, hence the
    entitlement for daring. Power is there by mercy and is
    entitled to mercy, and by a further twist if you count on         mercy and assume that you deserve mercy, you actually       no longer need mercy.

Mercy is bestowed by God, and one who has been granted mercy, by the nature of the gift, must now be merciful himself. This next generation of mercy is necessary because it shows that who was gifted divine mercy, in fact deserves divine mercy. “Mercy is the godly part of power.” We define sovereign as a power that can suspend the law, or work above the law, mercy is precisely this exception to law. “Mercy is a usurer which, by not demanding a circumscribed surplus, opens up an absolute debt.” An absolute debt is one which can never be repaid, an infinite, or in the vocabulary of religion, an eternal debt.


Text from Exhibition essay - Age of Consent
ECCL VOL. II, Block Museum, Evanston, IL, 2015
April 30th - June 21, 2015

MERCY IS THE GODLY PART OF POWER