Non-Monetary Exchange, Part Two

What about behind the scenes?

How do the documentary photos that you see on this blog get taken? What about the video or the brochure that was created?

Again, barter is the modus operandi when intangibles like art are being created in social spaces that are invisible to cash economies. A good example is the hours of superb digital video that Emmy-award winning filmmakers Kathy Brew and Roberto Guerra shot on the first day of the Portrait Exchange. Although they were incredibly busy, Kathy and Roberto agreed to shoot for a variety of reasons including their own interest in the project and its focus on art-making in an unexpected place, and also, friendship – I’ve known them for years. Still, we also made a deal for a pair of portraits drawn by me, a deal which is as yet unredeemed (One of the intriguing aspects of barter economies is that the barter tends to slow down the pace of economic interactions between individuals, which is generally considered a negative. Yet my debt to Kathy and Roberto has drawn out our exchange to many months, in some ways magnifying our connections by ensuring that I contact them again down the road. This burden to reconnect hangs in the air like a thread between us until the barter is completed. I’m bound to their generosity. Economic exchange of this kind is not like anonymously buying a cup of coffee, or even, quite frankly, like hiring someone to do a one day video shoot.).

In the case of the Central Park Portrait Exchange, another issue of importance is the development of new internet driven barter tools. I’ve relied heavily on an artist/barter website called OurGoods.org. OurGoods, founded by a group of artists and designers including Jen Abrams, Louise Ma, Carl Tashian, Rich Watts, and Caroline Woolard, describes itself as “a community of cultural producers matching "needs" to offered "haves".” I would describe it as being like a barter Ebay for artists, except that barter economies are fundamentally more complex than cash-driven economies in terms of person-to-person interactions and are more capable of bringing people together in relationships that may play out over years.

By using the OurGoods site I’ve received the photographic skills of four different artists, help on the ground during the portrait exchanges, Mandarin translation services and the design of a brochure to hand out onsite in Central Park! In exchange I’ve provided many bags of organic fruits and vegetables and a variety of as yet unfulfilled promises such as studio visits and grant-writing advice. I find it gratifying that the barter system that OurGoods uses rhymes so well with the goals of the Portrait Exchange.

Still, in the end, my own donated labor is the prime animating force of the project.

Session Two Report

Two more portrait exchanges were completed this today between Li Qun and Peter Walsh and between Dean Lu and Peter Walsh. The morning was overcast and breezy with a fine mist occasionally threatening to become rain, but the weather held out. The drawings were done at one of the main locations for professional portrait artists in Central Park - near the Plaza Hotel and across from Grand Army Plaza at the corner of 59th and East Drive.  Photos coming soon!

Comments by Peter Walsh:
“These two exchanges went very smoothly. We used a new paper – Windsor and Newton 90lb. hot pressed watercolor - which worked a lot better than the Rives BFK used for Session One, but still it had more texture than the newsprint that many of the artists in Central Park normally use. We may try yet another paper for Session Three. Xiang Yue Chuan joked that I had made Li Qun look a bit like Mao, and Dean Lu was amazingly fast, drawing with a piece of compressed Chinese charcoal in one hand and a cigarette in the other.”

Thanks go out to Robin Randisi and Miriam Eusebio who were on hand to take photos. Both are members of the Ourgoods.org website, a new artists’ barter website, and they will be completing barters soon with Walsh in exchange for their photos work. Seems a fitting way to deepen the exchange project and their pictures will be posted soon!