The Visionary Trading Project - a series of public actions, events and an exhibitions, dedicated to Broadway Market, Hackney.

 

 

 

 

Please find below information about The Visionary Trading Project -

a series of public actions, events and an exhibitions, dedicated to

Broadway Market, Hackney.

For this project we have commissioned 7 new art works, inspired by the

market and they are all presented in the show at Guest Projects.

We hope you and your members will be interested in the project. The show is on

till 26th of June.

With kind regards,

Margarita Dorovska

curator

The Visionary Trading Project

28 May – 26 June

Opening: 27th May 2011 | 6pm-9pm

Open on Friday-Sunday from 12pm to 6pm, free admission

Guest Projects, 1 Andrews Road, London, E8 4QL

Public information: http://visionarytradingproject.com

Tel: 07885766556

The Visionary Trading Project brings together seven new commissions, events and interventions, addressing the socio-economic changes that the Broadway Market area of East London has experienced in the last decade. Proposing imaginative narratives and alternative models of trade and exchange, the projects ascribe fictional elements to the real stories and structures of the area. Borrowing content and imagery from myths, fables and popular culture and inscribing it into the existing ‘idylls’ of the Saturday Market, the artists breach common cultural conventions and offer uncanny visions of social transaction.

On 14th of May artist Greta Alfaro’s edible and perfectly shaped black apples were sold to the market crowd. Her deceptive offering was conceived as an exploration of the ambiguous nature of commercial goods, bringing back the old myth of the apple as a false promise.

Around the same time, posters reading 'Your dust is cash. Each Oz. is money' appeared around Broadway Market. Behind this idea were Mexican artists Alfadir Luna and Antonio Vega Macotela, who had developed an exchange scheme for the Visionary Trading Project in line with their long lasting interest in currency as a mediation device through which social relations are established. They buy dust from homes of residents of the area and pay them in sterling pounds. To consolidate the process the acquired “valuables” will be stored in a bank safe, and documents of the exchange exhibited in the Guest Projects space.

On 21st May Petko Dourmana sold Bulgarian rose oil at the market. His customers had to pay him with a highly personal possession; their body odour. The lucrative offer, accepted at first as a joke, made them feel uncomfortable upon realising that the technique employed and his specially prepared chair were part of East Germany's Stasi methodology for odourologic collection and analysis, still used in countries like Russia, Cuba and Bulgaria.

Heman Chong and Anthony Marcellini's radio drama Public Allergies, broadcasted on Resonance FM, tells the story of  fictional artist Simon Tam, who has been invited to create a public art project in Broadway Market. For this commission Tam proposes a performance that consists of situating one hundred riot policemen along Broadway Market. However, the piece triggers a reaction from the public that results in a full-scale riot.

Harry Meadows has been commissioned to make new designs for manhole covers around Broadway Market. Embedded in the texture of the street, these unnoticed relics of municipal design and heavy industry become, for once, a canvas for the artist's commentary on the schisms and unlikely combinations sitting uneasily together in the market.

Laura Oldfield has developed for the project a series of guerilla style posters looking into the history and context of the area. Her psychogeographic investigations capture the city in its intensive state of movement and flux deliberately seek the point of transition from an aesthetic practice to a radical analysis.

The fragile balance between aesthetic documentation and critique also inhabits the film by Ilona Sagar, which looks into development sites representative of an aspirational desire to improve, style and play-out an ideal way of living. On her work for the VTP, Sagar has worked in collaboration with Adam Nathaniel Furman, a designer, writer and lecturer at the Architectural Association and with sound designer  Doug Haywood.

Artist and hacker Paolo Cirio will exhibit for the first time in London his visionary credit cards, introducing the peer-to-peer gift finance system. Visitors will be able to get a counterfeit credit card during his public actions in the area or directly at the gallery.