Financial exchange is only one of many possible exchanges in our world, just as financial value is only one of many values existing in society. Spiritual, social, and emotional values ( to name just a few……) can’t all just be quantified in measurable piles of banknotes. So the Exchanghibition Bank’s 2012 banknote is not just about financial exchange: In order to acquire a 2012 banknote money alone won’t be enough, you will also need to provide us with your Idea for Change. This will then be linked to your uniquely numbered banknote.

So, we are collecting many Ideas for Change, hoping the banknote’s expiration date of 21-12-2012 will urge you to take action soon to start realizing your Dreams.

But we also have (20)12 Ambassadors of Change to Inspire you with their Ideas, and hopefully make you aware as well of some of the very cool work they are doing themselves. First Ambassador we are going to introduce to you is Daniel Pinchbeck, a New York author and journalist, who is also co-founder of the social activist network Evolver, editorial director of Reality Sandwich, made the movie ’2012-Time for Change’ and was editor of the ‘What comes after Money’ book

His Idea for Change:

Global Jubilee. My idea is that 12/21/12 should be declared a universal jubilee, a forgiveness of all debt globally, including personal, national, and business debt. This was actually done at the end of a 52 year calendar round for the Maya, and the end of the Long Count also completes one of these cycles. The jubilee day would be followed by an immediate transition into a new economic paradigm, with new forms of currency and ways to exchange value that support local community health and biodiversity. This would include no-interest local currencies and a global trading currency with a negative interest or demurrage charge.

Live-painting by Ottograph and Zender at the Art As Money Festival on the 9th of February

Hello All,

It is .. CARNIVAL ..!

In the spirit of the carnival this year, I want to share some nice banknotes from my collection, these are probably banknotes used in a carnival parade as ..flyers.. which were thrown into the crowd during a local parade.

Alaaf .. Peter ..!

This is a story on how an artist thinks and does business. It’s not gonna be a funny story, but you might learn something from it. As for me it seems way to late…

I am the artist. And now I am going to tell you how 600.000 interested people visited my website while I was drinking beer, sinking my relationship and running around out wondering if I would ever be Rich, Famous and Loved.

I call it the Van Gogh-Syndrome, the ever occupied artist that wants to change the world and doesn’t make a penny on his (sometimes genius) work. He can’t sell a piece of his soul, all the emotions..how can he ever express it in cash…!??! We know many artists suffer from this disease. Thank God, the farmers, baker and butchers in the world don’t suffer from it. It would be quite a hustle having a baker emotionally attatched to his bread. And a butcher who wants to sign his steaks…

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“Be realistic – demand the impossible!” – Anonymous graffiti, Paris 1968

There is a hidden history of anti-establishment art, which has had profound, though not generally recognised, consequences on society and culture. Characterized by a surrealist perspective on aesthetics and politics, a small group of international political and artistic agitators with roots in Marxism, Lettrism and the early 20th century European artistic and political avant-gardes, sought to challenge the separation of art and politics from everyday life.

In Newcastle during 1966 brothers David & Stuart Wise produced a ‘radical’ arts magazine called Icteric (meaning jaundice as well as a cure for jaundice). It was, said David Wise in retrospect a “confused attempt – though brave for the time – to get to grips with a profoundly conservative cultural establishment.”, “We wanted the authenticity of real life. And we wanted, like the surrealists, ‘to relive with intensity the best moments of childhood.’ This phrase was never far from our lips and we gave it, and others, a renewed lease of life by reproducing them and plastering Newcastle with stickers.” Icteric was a brief moment in an altogether much bigger creative unfolding taking place all over the world from the mid 60s onwards. The critique it had been moving towards was realised in greater coherence in 1967 by the Situationist Internationale.

The journal Internationale Situationiste defined a Situationist as “having to do with the theory or practical activity of constructing situations.” The core arguments confronted the supposed capitalist degradation of the life of people and the fake models advertised by the mass media. They argued that “people’s everyday lives were taken up by a meaningless and trivial waste of time, such as commuting and commodity consumption. “As people consume they become part of ‘the spectacle’, making rebellion against it difficult.” A significant idea developed in the first phase was that artists were to “break down the divisions between individual art forms, to create situations, constructed encounters and creatively lived moments in urban settings, instances of a transformed everyday life”.

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More Black and White drawings: 1 -  2 -  3 -  4 -  5 – 6

The weekend after the Art As Money Festival seems a good moment to provide you with some impressions of the day on this blog.

After yesterdays pics by the Hospages now some cool panoramic shots by R.E.L

The pictures below show the Exchanghibition Bank, Dadara‘s talk, live-paintings by Ottograph, Zender and the Vage Gasten, and the exhibition space.

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Here are some pics taken by Arthur de Smidt of the Hospages.

Click this link to see more photos he took at the Art As Money Festival.

The event, which originally was meant to be a one-off, turned out to be so great that we already started thinking about doing it again next year

Please give us your feedback in the comments; your criticism, what you thought was good, what was bad, and most of all how we can make it better.

Or even better: maybe you’d like to get involved next time!

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Looking back at the first year of the Exchanghibition Bank on occasion of the Art As Money Festival.

If this is too small to read than CLICK HERE for a bigger picture.

When you are working with money as an artist or you are interested in the concept of money itself, this question is one of the most important and controversial. To come straight to the point: Is it forbidden to destroy money?

NO.

I asked the German Federal Bank in place of all countries using the Euro as currency precisely this question and they told me:

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