Exchange (2010)
Taos mesa, New Mexico
5:10 min high definition video
(low res version below)
‘Exchange’ looks at notions of value, beauty, cost and exchange.
During a residency with PLAND, New Mexico, USA, I made friends with the basket maker Bob Allalunis. He taught me how to weave baskets from the red willow that grows in the irrigation ditches in and around Taos. In the hours we spent weaving and hanging out, we had many conversations about value, cost, exchange and beauty, as well as issues around artists arriving in a new ‘locality’, interacting with the people there, and then leaving. Was there a fair exchange between Bob and I? What was the cost? Were the skills I’d learnt valued by myself and others? How should I apply these skills in my personal ‘locality’? Could the woven baskets lend their beauty to objects seen as ugly? Would the beauty of the woven baskets help the reassessment of the formerly unvalued/abject/undesired?
I tested some of these questions by setting up a stall at the bridge over the Taos Gorge, were an impromptu market gathers each day, selling wares to the tourists who come to see the gorge. I had woven three bottle baskets, within which I placed bottles of pee fertilizer, made with the diluted morning pee (8:1) of myself and my residency hosts. I offered people the chance to name their price, no amount would be too small or too large.