Outpost: Bringing Bartering Back

Last week, I participated in the New York Thursday night activity of gallery hopping. This time, though, I wasn't solely tempted by the prospect of free booze mixed with incredible people watching and taking in a well-known artist's new work. Instead, I faced an unseasonably blustery and bitter October night to witness, and even participate in, good old fashioned bartering. I found myself on the 6th floor of an SVA building at the opening of a group exhibition called "Outpost," organized by Amy Wilson and featuring the work of Visual and Critical Arts students. Instead of placing a price tag on the artwork, students have "mailboxes" next to their pieces where people can place slips with their offer to trade something in return for the piece.

From the show's literature:

"What we are asking is: what is this painting worth? A cupcake? Ten cupcakes? A TV? What if someone wanted to clean your apartment in exchange for a work of art? What sort of value do we put on the things that we make? In order for a transaction to occur, the artist and the 'collector' must agree on the value of the work of art, without specifically discussing money."

Like many other New Yorkers, I've been bitten by the entrepreneurial ambition that imbues the culture here so thoroughly, and have toyed with the idea of how freelancing my skills might work, or perhaps starting a little shop, albeit online. But as I stood in the middle of the Outpost exhibition, I really had to put aside any numbers I'd previously conjured up on items I would put in my as-of-now fictional online store, and instead think of what I could potentially offer that would be a fair and equal trade for one of these pieces. This almost seemed harder to do for art, since unlike most goods we consume, the worth is not evaluated through a fairly straight forward series of supply vs demand analysis, and instead has an almost incalculable quality to it. To be honest, I was stumped, and didn't quite come up with an offer for some of the pieces I was pondering, but was amazed at the amount of thought required to really, truly place worth on something without relying on dollars and cents.

In an economy where recession is at the forefront of our minds, and the average person might be paying closer attention to the fluctuating figures in bank accounts than he or she did a year ago, it seems almost unnatural to subtract the dollar sign from our consumption. Of course, the sustainability of the bartering practice seems to have run its course a long while back, but it poses a surprisingly refreshing way to assign value in our modern-day evaluation process of goods and services.

You can take this reevaluation challenge yourself by viewing the exhibition at 133/141 W21st on the building's 6th floor, open now until November 9th.