Debt, an Active Conversation

Had among the action club (http://www.action-club.org/) this winter

as if it has a purpose
financial exchange
transference
ritual

education as a form of salvation
belief system
community
buying your future
belief in personal enrichment
improving upon the details of one's life
debt is profitable

big is purgatory/ halfway house for objects waiting to be redeemed
physical confessional
religion is recycling
repent through organizing

we need a system to value/evaluate our use of objects
-one category: unreasonable attraction to certain objects

what is useful/useless?

ideas: (remembered not written)
create a nun character through the placement of objects from big.
make the space so one can (or cannot) enter
the placement of the objects has a strange logic, perhaps we make a map to decipher it
the use of video might show our action/ or the action of organization (=salvation)
walking through the space might be the experience of walking through the nun's brain or conscience
we might use a mirror to multiply the depth and add the viewer into the room
we could use the two windows, let the stuff of the room move out

questions: how will we communicate what is happening?
are you guys still into this train of thought without the mugs in front of us?
i, cassie, am still obsessed with debt collection, and i feel like there is a way to involve blinged out debt rocking in here. i really like the idea of getting people to come and drop off a copy of their debt, post it on a bulletin board or something. does the nun feel the debt of others?Although you have fallen behind on your payments, we have a variety of payment plans and other options to help you. Please take a moment today and call us toll-free at one of the numbers listed below to discuss your options. We have helped many of our customers resolve their payment problems due to financial difficulties - we can do the same for you.
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Also, one more thing:
Some ideas I have that are strings that we might be able to tie together... I am really interested in ideas of debt- like personal debt, spanning from finance to borrowed objects. Uncomfortable economies. Personal taxes. I like mining the vocabulary of economics for the psychological buttons that make us 'feel' money, value, debt, etc. I have this idea that I have not yet been able to articulate, but involves junk, a game show, debt exorcisms, and paper mache rocks covered in glitter as some sort of currency that gets thrown at something. I recently constructed a debt collection tuxedo jacket out of muslin and I would like to wear it.

Just thought I'd toss that one out there. Seems appropriate to talk about debt in a convent.
Putting a saddle on it,somehow similarly, I've been coming to this realization that gold is
merely a geological phenomenon, taking it's place among quartz and
other valueless stones and rocks. And somehow this mineral has become
a keystone (pun) for our entire global economy. This realization is
nothing unique, and in the end, quite banal. But nonetheless, I've
been thinking about it a lot, and wondering how it will manifest in
the making.and i was also thinking about commodities and mineral extraction since out in santa fe the entire state is ripped apart by it, and how these drooled over assets are mined from one location and the value sent to another, and the damage that is inflicted where they were dug up would take so many times more $$ to repair -- if you even could -- and dead men in diamond mines, mountains removed to get at their coal insides, plutonium leeched into a town's water supply -- than the value of that which is being mined. value derived from moving things around from place to place while nobody is looking, never looking too hard at where they're coming from -- so that even in Haiti people were eating mud cakes before the earthquake because they were told to grow sugar cane and bananas to sell to US and to buy their grain and yams from China or Mexico and once we could get sugar and bananas cheaper in Honduras or Ecuador they had nothing to sell us, could not afford to buy their own bananas, and then could not afford to buy the imported food anymore either...

value created or recreated, alchemically, by build it green, too, moving bits and pieces from where they once had value but now do not, to a holding place where their value climbs and finally peaks at the price paid, and then becomes part of someone else's valuation, rebuilt into expensive furniture or chic piano bar ambiance... so... moon rocks.... exchange mediums.... rarer earth.... transubstantiation ritual.... turning the water into wine... the bread into the body.... the host.... can we exchange your lead for gold... can we bake bread? we can dip it all in a special syrup syzyrup... mmm.... hmm.... hmmm? I am teaching a class out in Providence next Thursday, but I think your idea of personal debt is really on. Uncomfortable economies.

I'd love to set up interviews at one of the cop desks with Wall Street / Investment Bank People who lost their jobs, interviewing about their personal debt, starting with the literal, and then moving underhandedly into the notion of personal debt to society, etc...

Interviews, debtors, gold, value of the rare, supply and demand, trade...

good ideas.. I love the small realizations about the basic parts of our culture that we take for granted until they don't any longer... like minerals gold being from the earth. and we just keep jacking the price of gold because it is more real than our abstract ecomony.
can we define a new future history of 'gold'?
does the room become a mined mine?
or we mine our visitors/ourselves/the area for what we need, which we transport to the next show?
we mine for data that we use in the next event?

I am really into the idea of tallying people's debt, even making a huge receipt could be cool. I was thinking about getting people to bring their bills, or to write a receipt for something that they owe or feel that they wrongfully have. we can turn them into golden rocks by paper macheing them and painting them gold, making a huge pile of golden debt or something.

yes to interviews and or consultations, we can talk to anyone about their debt-- no one has escaped it in one form or anothe