What starts as a harmless production commission evolves into one of the biggest media art debates of recent years: Danish conceptual artist Jens Haaning is asked to reconstruct two of his earlier works for the Museum Kunsten in Aalborg – frames filled with banknotes symbolising the average annual salary in Denmark and Austria. The banknotes, worth half a million kroner or 74,000 euros, are provided by the museum. But, not for the first time, Haaning is annoyed at the working conditions of his profession. He keeps the borrowed money and delivers empty canvases and a title: “Take the Money and Run”.
Ole Juncker’s film accompanies the artist in the period following this action – between international media hype, a civil lawsuit by the defrauded institution and personal crises. Haaning, who suffers from bipolar disorder, takes impulsive decisions, invests in real estate and finds himself in financial straits which he seeks to offset by ad hoc sales of his work. The pressure on the protagonist is mirrored in a rapid montage of disparate images: car rides, surreal animations, action cam footage of a parkour runner and TV reports condense into a portrait of the artist as a rogue who is determined to explore whether art, at least, can get away with crime.