A transaction is an act of exchange: giving something in return for something received. A deal. A trade. A particular instance of buying or selling.

A transaction is also a bank record: money moving in and out of an account. Office rent, salaries, transfers—everything becomes a transaction, an invisible trace inside a system.

Transaction Art originated in London, where I studied at Central Saint Martins. One day, I met a Mayfair gallerist who became the muse of Transaction Art. When we first met, he said:

You are nobody (hidden face) in London. Thousands like you come here to become nobody (hidden faces), until you have a certain bank account (Transaction) and until you are the best friend of British aristocrats (Transaction).

That remark became a slogan—the first statement of Transaction Art:

We are the children of war. The War is money. Money has no face. It’s so simple as transaction. We are the children of the Transaction. We are the children with Hidden faces.

In 2012, I publicly presented this slogan for the first time during a performance at a church in Amsterdam. A balaclava fully covered my head and face. Around my neck, I wore a high, stiff black collar in the style of a sixteenth-century ruff—starched and tight to the throat, a marker of status among Europe’s upper and middle classes. I was half-naked.

I kept my hand clenched. When people asked questions, I stayed silent. Then I opened my palm: $M, written in red.

By coincidence—or, as I took it, a sign—the stone slab I stood on carried a single mark: $M. The church had been destroyed during the Second World War; during reconstruction, its floor was laid with stone brought from across Europe. That slab may once have belonged to a noble family.

The slogan stood behind me, not as an explanation, but as a caption.

After that, I began to record different kinds of transactions.

Why chase a million, when I can manage the Transaction Art Universe?