Rodrigo Azaola

Interactive digital art installation

MMT is an an interactive, speculative, self-contained universe where financial incantations become playable magical phenomena. At its core, Mystic Monetary Theory interrogates contemporary finances —playing with the concept of Modern Monetary Theory (MMT)— as acts of faith deployed across a specific conception of time. This work functions as a theater of financial mysticism, blurring lines between authority and imagination.

The work is visually grounded in the 2019 Lebanon financial crisis, during which the Central Bank’s mismanagement —including fraud, theft, and criminal conspiracy— led to massive losses for citizens and a profound economic and social crisis. Visual elements such as bank logos and sonic cues, including interviews in English and Arabic as well as street soundscapes, are dispersed throughout the environment.

The player's interactivity is limited to roaming and exploring; no assets can be touched or modified. Additionally, there is no map, so while new areas may be discovered, previous locations cannot be returned to. These intentional mechanics mimic how people have very limited understanding of, and control over, central bank policies.

In this way, the environment becomes both archive and altar, resisting time and place while confronting the entanglement —anchored in fragile systems of trust and collapse— between modern finance and faith.


https://form.jotform.co/90458974361871



Modelab: nomadic initiative exploring historical narratives


Fin-crime. Weird economies. Spring 2025.


----- My work is an ongoing speculative research on financial structures and their factual repercussions over biological timelines and entities.


I’m a founder member of Modelab, an artistic initiative that explores public space by attending its past and current dynamics, with recent exhibitions at Chicxulub (2022); Les Traversées du Marais Festival, Paris; Taipei Artist Village, Taipei (2019); Manila Biennale, Philippines (2018), etc. In response to the pandemic lockdown, I launched Radio Ensayo, a decentralized web radio station focused on experimental sound practices and visual arts. Before, I worked with the H. Committee of Human Vindication, an arts collective that operated as a universal pseudo-organization founded in 1947.

Recently, I've been awarded the Mexican Endowment for Art Creators 2021–2023 (SNCA).

My writing on art, culture, and politics has been published in international magazines, such as Letras Libres, Nexos, Foreign Affairs, Artslant, etc.






“We have nothing to lose. I will go back to Walmart giving blowjobs behind the dumpster. I don't care. I just want you dead. I want Wall Street dead.”

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Names of shell companies associated with land and wealth (extracted from leaked financial databases)  and virtual land environments that permit financial flows serve as a chip-tuned side-note about how wealth is secretly deployed across jurisdictions.



Notions of value are transformed and dispersed; risk and gains occur as synthetic money and cryptocurrencies clash with national and international laws.

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Armida

A little better

1812

Phantom pain

Triumph

83+1

Tropical gulag

Museum of good



About

News



A little worse looks at the GameStop stock short squeeze of January 2021, a frenzy retail buyout fueled by the gamification of financial platforms and Internet forums. This was a rebellion of armchair bankrupt investors, in dire economic despair but flushed with Covid-19 cash hand-outs. For a few days, the narrative favored the bold, and fortunes were made and lost. I even took some stock positions, investing money from an art grant.

The narrative behind the short squeeze was that of a coordinated rebellion against hedge-funds' stern financial maneuvers, driven by amateur financial analysts calling to “make a stand” against Wall Street. The discourse was heavy in imagery  —emotions as a kind of capital—, but its encoded desires actually reinforced the system of behaviors demanded for the effective reproduction of capitalist power, including relations of class, race, and gender.

A little worse is a visual diary, from January to June 2021, of uncertainty and irrationality driven by global fiscal and monetary stimulus, but also of the emotions and aspirations of amateur shareholders and their justified and somewhat futile critique of Wall Street’s financial opacity. This memoir was made while realizing a 900% return on my investment.