Time/Bank

I’ve long been interested in time-based alternative currencies, and the idea is playing a substantial role in the film I’ve been working on for the past year. Time/Bank is a project by artists Julieta Aranda and Anton Vidokle (of the art network and journal e-flux) that attempts to establish a time bank for the art community. Aranda and Vidokle clearly know their stuff - they trace the time banking concept not just to Ithaca, but to Owen and Warren, and link to a number of contemporary time banking projects and resources. Using their website, artists are able to exchange hours of labor with other participants. For instance: you could spend two hours editing a video for someone in your city, and later use those two ‘hour-dollar’ credits to pay someone in Hamburg to translate your press release into German. The project was started last October, and the site gives no indication of whether or not it’s still operating (things like this have a tendency to die out quickly), but I’ve just submitted my application to join the network, so I guess I’ll find out soon enough.
For some reason I’ve never considered before that the art community may be especially suited for experiments in time-based labor exchange. For a few reasons… 1) the stakes are relatively low, 2) artists are typically known for not having a ton of money, 3) barter and unpaid labor exchange (internships, casual volunteering of skills among friends, etc.) are already common.
As part of their project, Aranda and Vidokle also asked a number of artists to design time-based currencies. A few of the designs are clever and aesthetically pleasing, most are ugly and ill thought out. A few have accompanying text explanations, most are left to speak for themselves. A few of those explanations are intelligent and creative, most are typical, overinflated artist statement blabber. These ones are my favorites:

“Film running on a camera that is pointed at an empty set. There are no actors, but the images are the promise of an exchange. No events yet, but my time for yours, for the images to become loaded with meaning.”

“When celebrating a time contract two parties need each find their own string. Any kind of string will do. […] The two parties join the strings in a lark’s head know, or two, or three, or four… One knot equals half an hour, a second knot equals an hour… and so on and so forth […] A note is born of each contract […] In theory a note (knot) can always be traced to its origins”

“This continuous roll of time-money is worth 24 hours. Divided into 48 half-hour segments, the roll was made on a printing calculator by typing the numbers 1 to 30 and then repeating the process 47 times. The user can tear the roll into whatever increments are needed. Artist Giuseppe Pinot-Gallizio’s ‘industrial paintings,’ which were kept on rolls and sold by the meter, provided the point of departure for the project.”
Vidokle himself and the net.art duo behind 0o0o0o0.org both had the clever idea of extending the concept beyond the visual/tactile, the former using a loaf of bread that takes one hour to bake, and the latter using silent mp3s of varying lengths. Contrary to the above examples, neither is at all practical, but they both have a poetic way of rethinking our perception of time.
























