Expansion Two: Paperweights

With the expansion two i took the concept of art as money and tried to turn it into a literal exchange of currency, the plan was to take the coins to other students, music dance etc and exchange the coins for their art whether it be their song of something about their art, that would be the exchange, akin to an exchange of services.
However this did not go to plan, nobody wanted the coin, except for mike in the workshop, who helped me make the coins, the receipt i gave him exists as an example of what i wanted, but nobody else wanted to exchange their art for my art. i was left reeling, unsure where to go and i decided that because the concept itself needed other people to exchange their art for mine and nobody wanted to, that the concept was now dead and so the art without a concept is a paperweight.

I started this work by scribbling my immediate feelings on some paper and then using the paperweights to hold the paper down, so they could actually function as a paperweight, this worked but the work could go more, art is something usually not interacted with on a literal sense, so by making the work interactive i further devalued the idea that this was an artwork, the work became a literal paperweight in which people would right something down and then place the paperweight on top of their thoughts, something akin to a funeral of the concept.

The artwork ran for about 2 and a half weeks before i pulled it down, there are 22 responses so far and is something which can continue as it continues to be installed.

The irony of the artwork is that the death of a concept is a new concept, life comes out of death, the work transformed itself into something new which ended up people exchanging their thoughts to participate in my artwork, which was what i kind of wanted all along.