FDIC Insured is collection of cast off investment guide books burned with the logos of the 300+ failed banks closed by FDIC during the great recession. The books were all purchased off the dollar racks at the Strand bookstore in New York City.
Since the beginning of the Great Recession the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation has taken control of over 300 failed or failing banks. The government has bailed out, or brokered forced sales of a number of other major financial institutions. These emergency conversions are done in one weekend; on Friday the bank is alive, but at 6 PM it begins a massive autopsy, and by Monday morning all traces of the original bank are gone. It is operated under the name of a formal rival bank, many of the employees are gone, and the entire visual signage has changed. These logos and the failures the represent disappear from our memory, they disappear from the clutter of the visual landscape, they are even erased from the Internet and its many archives. This archive is a memorial to these banks, the failure of the system they are part of, and the failure of their aesthetics of hope and strength.