Sinking Values was commissioned by the Swiss magazine Du. Over a period of eighty-eight minutes, a computer-controlled SLR camera recorded a change of sets at the Zurich Opera House. The set of an adaption of Robert Louis Stevenson’s pirate novel Treasure Island was disassembled, whilst the shopping-mall setting of SALE was set up, a project on the composer Georg Friedrich Händel by director Christoph Marthaler. The panorama simultaneously shows the set change and the recording and construction of the image. It merges the two sets into one image, thus also setting up a tension between the concepts “treasure” and “sale,” valorization, and devalorization, the subjects of the two plays.

Sinking Values was first published on a double page in DU Magazin. Later a framed version was produced with production details printed on the white border. Some images from this recording are part of Sale & Pleasure Abstracts, a series of posters (120 × 80 cm).