Lawrence Weschler Read this Today

In a talk with Mark Dion and Rene DeGuzman at Oakland Museum of California:

Nothing's a Gift
Wislawa Szymborska

Nothing's a gift, everything is borrowed.
I'm drowning in debts up to my ears.
I will be forced
to pay for myself with myself,
to give my life for my life.

It has been appointed
that the heart must be returned,
and the liver, too,
and each individual finger.

It's too late to cancel the contract.
Debts will be extracted from me
along with my skin.

I wander this earth
amid a throng of fellow debtors.
Some are burdened by the obligation
of paying off their wings.
Others, like it or not,
are charged for their leaves.

The Debt side encumbers
each tissue in us.
There is no eyelash, no petiole
to keep forever.

The register is meticulous
and it's evident that
we are to be left with nothing.

I can't remember
where, when and why
I consented to open
this account.

The protest against this account
is what we call the soul.
And it is the only thing
not on the list.

Hiroshi

My definition of what debt means is things bet to my life!
Hiroshi own anything from Cassie and she own moment of him ...
Rock cost $600 coze I cancel fright for chicago many many month ago was $600 form my mileage. Wooo!!

language is never neutral and takes up no space

TONIGHT I am contributing to a panel discussion about DIY art. I heard that DIY is over and now it's DIO (ourselves instead of yourself). I'll be talking about the process of working between secret microcosms and giant macro'n'cheese.

http://www.thefield.org/p-700-the-power-of-diy.aspx

revitalize your own economy of being. these are preliminary notes on what i will present tonight.
Thursday, June 24, 6:30-8pm - FREE
Taller Boricua, Multicultural Space, 1st Floor
at the Julia De Burgos Latino Cultural Center
1680 Lexington Avenue, between 105 & 106 Streets MAP

"[T]he more radical the person is, the more fully he or she enters into reality so that, knowing it better, he or she can transform it. This individual is not afraid to confront, to listen, to see the world unveiled. This person is not afraid to meet the people or to enter into a dialogue with them. This person does not consider himself or herself the proprietor of history or of all people, or the liberator of the oppressed; but he or she does commit himself or herself, within history, to fight at their side."
PAULO FREIRE

my work has existed in between spaces for all my time in nyc.
i prefer to work in two ways at the same time: in secret and in public.

IN secret.
i stay up all night making rocks out of receipts, which i paper mache, sometimes paint gold. they become jewelry. (that is not the art part.)
the rocks become a gift, which i give to people i meet. i have sold them on the street and in galleries-- by donation.
when i give them to someone new, and i tell them what the rock is made of, we talk about debt. (there is the creative part)
with every conversation, the subject is a little bit lighter. debt is a choice. debt is something i want. debt connects me to other people. debt roots me in society. without a little debt, i would not have anything to do. debt is not just about money, it is a marketplace for relationships.

the goal of this project is to make debt physical and to cause a shift in thought through exposing the language that acts as a container for our ideas and limits the way we move in the world.
when things are less abstract, it is easier to face them-- it's just a rock, it's just debt, and the guilt and anguish that limits our pursuits can be erradicated when we change our language.
paulo freire says: language is never neutral.
i say: the future of etymology can be an adventure. affecting language is a game, a rug that can be pulled out from under the feet of future history.
i want to take ownership over the words that define how i feel and what i do, and i dont want to be afraid because i dont fully understand what my mouth is doing.
i want to understand what it is, where its roots are, and to deal with it.
i want other people to feel the same freedom to play with the habits that define their existence. by facing words, and using them.

public WORK
this work with one on one conversations is situated within the development of two large public projects, where i work with many artists, people, and bureaucrats to make something happen. the inspiration for the play with words comes out of a lot of contact with people through teaching and organizing.

i have recently co-started two large public initiatives: teaching artist union and school of the future.
in 2008, as a teaching artist with a need for advocacy, support, and for camaraderie with others who maintain a teaching as art practice, i co founded teaching artist union. we met weekly in my studio and developed a steady community of about 50 local artists.

out of the frustrations of the union members, and the lack of idealism in the public school system, school of the future developed as a response.
school of the future is a collaboration with chris kennedy and nyc. it is a free intergenerational school, and it can happen anywhere. it is a conversation, an impromptu class, an idea, a question. this summer it will manifest for one month as a free school in a park in brooklyn.
it is about redefining teaching as learning, and both as a creative practice. it is a place for playful deprogramming and feeling freedom in everything we do, especially freedom to participate and change large societal systems.

we want to make new words. what is school, what is learning, what is education.
we raised money for education for our peers, our neighborhood, and anyone who has something to learn through teaching, or vice versa.

now we can learn freely. no student loans, no guilt, debt free. the only debt we have is to eachother. you taught me so i want to teach you. it's an infinite cycle of exploration, an ecosystem of people, a marketplace for relationships.

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.
To learn more about tips for managing your debt, including a variety of repayment plans and loan consolidation, visit us online.
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

Money for Education

See above, what we can teach and what we can learn. One side for each. How much for each coin?

Coins designed in a Workshop Called The Future of Education held at the Commons, organized by Christopher Kennedy and Huong Ngo on June 2.

KC Definition

Debt is a means for obtaining things that improve the quality of our lives right now which would otherwise take us a lifetime to save up for. Debt creates accountability; debt is a vested interest; debt is a transaction of trust and a statement of hope for the future. No one would take on a debt or allow one to be taken against them if they didn't truly believe it could and would be repaid. Debt is optimism.

KH Debt Definition

An irreducible remainder of the unbalanced identity relation between means, wants, and needs.