Art Basel’s ATM Leaderboard ‘winner’ has $9.5m in the bank — and isn’t Diplo

By Vittoria Benzine

Would you take money out of an ATM if your photo and balance were projected onto a giant screen for everyone nearby to see? Most likely not. But apparently Diplo would.

The ATM in question was a headline-grabbing piece of interactive art at Art Basel Miami Beach last week, presented by Brooklyn-based collective MSCHF. Its “ATM Leaderboard” functions like any other cash machine: Participants insert their bank cards to check balances and even make withdrawals. ATMs generally have a camera for security purposes — this one snaps participants’ photos, displaying them alongside their bank balance on a screen above the terminal which ranked them amongst everyone who dared give their card a dip.

On Friday at Art Basel, Diplo posted an Instagram video of himself using the ATM. As the machine registered his balance, a snapshot of the sunglasses-wearing superstar appeared on the screen followed by text reading “Please sir can I have some poor” and “#1” (see below). He swept the top spot at a balance of just over $3 million.

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“I just won Art Basel,” he wrote in the caption, proving the art collective’s point.

But Diplo’s victory was short-lived. By Saturday, he’d been bumped down to third place. The final top score was $9.5 million — a lot more than the $75,000 an anonymous local collector paid to purchase the ATM. (That buyer also got all the cash inside, somewhere between $6,000 and $7,000 when Art Basel started.)

Galerie Perrotin, which presented MSCHF’s ATM at Basel, says the anonymous collector plans to put “ATM Leaderboard” somewhere public, not only to bolster public infrastructure but also to call out people who’d beg borrow and steal for a Gucci bag to give the impression they’re important but wouldn’t dip their card in an ATM to prove it. (For the record, this reporter, while no stranger to oversharing, demurred.)

Meanwhile, you don’t have to travel to Florida to catch MSCHF’s work yourself: The group has a show up at Perrotin’s Lower East Side gallery through December 23. Titled “No More Tears, I’m Lovin’ It,” the exhibition spans traditional art media like giclee prints (paparazzi shots of Jennifer Lopez leaving a dance class) and works of oil on canvas made from AI-generated feet pics.

Cultural commentary is clearly MSCHF’s media of choice, though. “No More Tears, I’m Lovin’ It” also replicates hot consumer goods like Converse’s Chuck Taylors and Chanel No. 5. A section titled “Pawn Shop” features twelve locked Apple iPhone 7’s, each stocked with phone numbers for celebrities including Jamie Foxx, Ivanka Trump and, you guessed it, Diplo.