Free Store

[Elcia]

I just left a lecture on the subject so I wanted to share it with all of you.

The Free Store was an interactive art exhibit in New York City that put a new twist on an old idea. These two women rented out a store for a few weeks in New York's finance center where they "sold" things for free back in February.
It worked like a store in the sense that "costumers" had to "check out and get a receipt" But the concept was more along the lines of modern interactive instillation art.

Some short articles explaining:
1
2
3

So discus:
Free Stores
Free stuff
Consumerism
Capitalism
And modern conceptual art  

[Serious Erius]

This should not be art, it should be the common thing, along with the general abolishment of the monetary system and the principle of scarcity bringing value.
We have the means of providing food for everyone, shelter for everyone, energy for everyone without having to burn fossil fuels, etc.
The assumption that without nmoney as a reward, nobody would do something is false.
Cause in a resource based system, if you don't do anything, the resoruces would either stop coming out, or degrade.
Plus, if we have food and shelter without worry, our free time would automatically gravitate to improving things.

But we all know that won't happen until the current system crashes HARD.
It's not human nature to need money, and humans have simple needs, seriously.
We need an overhaul.

Free store should be real store ... if everyone has everything, being greedy has no meaning anymore.
It wont matter if you have 100crates of food when there would be no scracity and everyone being able to feed no matter how big their hunger is.
Etc. and think of the technologic advancement, now that it would be free of shackles, having to hold back, cause parts which do not degrade quickly don't bring money. Etc.

It would not be perfect, but much better than the current system, without being hippie.

There are so many more things I could say here, but this is a good starting point to think about razz .  

[Elcia]

That definately could be made to work at least as well as our pressent system!


What I will say on the subject of the art part it this.
I'm an art student and so the topic of what is art has come up alot and there is no perfect answer. This sort of thing causes debates all the time.
Part of it is becase the idea of art has changed in the last several hundred years from strickly patroned works toward this idea of "express yourself" and the making art for it's own sake.

This exibit falls under the ideas of concept art and perfomance art.
The point of concept art is well; to toy with a concept and get your audience to think about that concept.
Performance art involves interaction (it's not so much acting per say but there is some of that involved) in this case the interaction went between the "clerks" - the artists
and the "shoppers" - the audience.