PERFORMANCEBarterCart

Barter Cart is an interactive public project in which participants are invited to exchange creative capital instead of real money to get snacks from a simulated food cart.
Based on the barter system, the project exists as a way for participants to question the worth of their personal talents as well as test out the limits of their comfort zones in the public act of procuring a trade.
At the food cart, I offered snacks I had made through three different forms of exchange:
#1. choose from a list of things I
was particularly looking for, like
“info about audio recording
equipment” or “motivational
speaking”
#2. choose blindly from a box of
actions I’d like to see happen, such
as “man my booth for 5 min, so I
can take a break” or “a five minute
discussion with me on a food
related political topic, such as the
soda ban”
#3. Offer their own suggestion of a
fair trade with an item or their own
talent, such as a drawing or a song.

Snacks were varied to hit different hankerings: shortbread cookies, coco-krispies, granola bars, spiced nuts, lentil rice salad, corn tomato salad.

Left: Bartering
Right: List of trades I was especially interested in making happen

Left: A participant reading an offer from the box of suggestions.
Right: A participant “manning” my booth so I could take a break.

Snack backstock

Left: Getting a drawing in exchange for spicy pepitos
Right: Getting a good joke in exchange for a coco krispie bar

Getting a Kombucha scoby in exchange for lentil rice salad

More trades!
Left: Spiced nuts and a granola bar for a mink...yes, a stuffed mink!
Right: A couple cookies for handmade soap

Left: A granola bar for a book
Right: A cookie for a coin that says “no cash value”...seriously!

Spicy Pepitos for a drawing (the same drawing referenced in an earlier photo)

© Lisa Sikorski 2010