BROKE ASSOCIATES TRADING CO.
A boy of 17, through a series of Craigslist swaps, traded up an old cell phone to a Porsche. Years prior, a man started with a paperclip and ended up with a house. In the contemporary art world, one artist used his assigned production budget to play the currency exchange market, but rather than trying to make a profit, chose one weak currency after another in a series of losing trades in an effort to lose everything. Another artist, used his grant money to purchase semi-precious gemstones and scattered them across an unused plot of land that has since become a place of congregation, where townsfolk and visitors alike could partake in playful treasure hunting, thereby imbuing the place with a kind of new myth and meaning, another kind of value. The Japanese artist Shimabuku, when asked why he organized a dog swimming competition to commemorate a Welsh town’s forgotten canine hero, lamented that in today’s era of maximizing profit and efficiency, such things can only exist in the context of art.
How do we confer value to things designated as art? On what bases do we decide which product of creative labor is worth as much, or less than, another? How much does our perception of its maker, quality, relevance, and provenance factor in? Can you assign value to and acquire a performance? A poem? Would you want to? What would be equivalent or worthwhile in exchange?
Broke reinvents itself as Broke Associates Trading Co., (a fictional corporate entity that vaguely sits between a financial institution and an auction house) and together with MONO8 Gallery propose a situation wherein these and yet unexplored notions of value could be tested in a real world setting.
Gary Ross Pastrana, Curator and Co-Founder
Mechanics
Beginning with a single artwork, the gallery will open the floor for ‘swap’ offers from fellow artists, friends, collectors and patrons and perhaps even institutions. Agents will be employed to facilitate further trading possibilities.
With trade offers on hand, an appointed panel will decide whether a proposed swap would be accepted and then the trading will continue with this new artwork as the current piece on offer.
Only the current piece that is up for swapping will be displayed at the gallery but documentation of previously traded works will be available for perusal.
Swapping will continue until the final day of the show. The last artwork on hand, depending on what Broke and the gallery decide upon, may then be kept, sold, donated or destroyed.
