The idea of the Drachma Project is to reflect on and challenge the form, the content and the function of economic value. The focus of the investigation is currency, the Drachma and latently the Euro, which were studied as knots of affective tension and as screens for the projection of desire and subjectivity. The question of representation of value in currency is obviously related to semiotics as it is connected to aesthetics and art. The intention is to address and interrupt affective investments in the dominant ideology, in consumption and production, as they are channelled through currency, developing a mixed practice of theoretical critique and “speculative numismatics” (Lee 2011). Currency is read like a text and the text constructs the narrative of the fetish; each coin or banknote can be broken down to its own visual-textual elements, the analysis of which can be extracted in symbolic and iconographic patterns that represent community and value.

Vilém Flusser's thought proved extremely relevant for the investigation of money, illuminating the question of the representation of value in the era of technical images. Flusser's hypothesis about the dominance of technical images, being photographs, machine-produced texts, or hybrid configurations of text and image, as the main conduits to social reality and the apparatuses that organise it suggests that our participation in the market is conditioned upon our identification with the iconic representations of value and desire as they are articulated in the visual textual architecture of the currency (a series of technical images produced by the money-apparatus). The analysis of banknotes, as technical images produced by the money-apparatus of the state, can trace the process of self-representation as it is articulated and communicated in currency. Issues like history, territoriality and nationality feature prominently in the iconography of money and these elements are used to communicate trust and value.