spend-it | 2007

short on spend-it
In 2003, Antoine Desvigne bought an apartment in Brussels. In 2006, its value had increased. He decided to spend the gain in an event called spend-it. He invited Heike Langsdorf to design this event together. For starting, the future gain was materialized into tokens. The tokens were printed and released in March 2006. A token had an indicative value of 15 Euro. Then, we contacted 18 people. Each one received 100 tokens in exchange of any kind of production 'presented' during the public period. During one year, the 18 people spread their tokens (considering their future value) during their every-day-life. Between 31st of March and 21st of April 2007, all the people with tokens, a heterogenous population mixing artists of all kind, homeless, art-collectors, cyclists, hobby-cooks, etc. ... had converged to "spend-it".



on the success and failure of spend-it ...
spend-it was an attempt to create a community based on personal interest by sharing a central collective task. This task was to collectively spend 50.000 €, gained on the free market. The initiators therefore created a sort of virtual reality and rules, conditioning participation to the project. Aim was to eventually run a three weeks festival, which should make visible the existence of the community and their activities on the one hand, and present interesting artistic work on the other hand. spend-it wasn't in any conventional way announced, hyped or promoted. What was at stake was much more to put on test in how far personal networks could reach and merge with unknown communities. spend-it was in this regard never authored by anyone and was all about initiating and participating.

30.000 € out of 50.000 € were never actually payed out cash but were visualized in form of tokens and then distributed to even amounts. The first 10 members, which confirmed their participation, after a couple of conversations by the initiators, received two packages of respectively 100 tokens, to be invested into spend-it. This meant firstly to develop and contribute a personal activity throughout the 2 years and secondly to invite one more person, to become part of the so-called 'second generation' of spend-it.

20.000 € were reserved for the realization of the festival, including renting and installing places, running a kitchen-restaurant (only tokens accepted) and the curation of an exclusive spend-it program. Curators were again the participants, with respectively 300 € of symbolic salary, to be spent on whatever they wanted to present.

What was successfully achieved with this model was first of all the emergence of an underground alliance, which after 2 years of preparation time was outing itself. This caused in no time a considerable enlargement of this initial community, consisting out of people coming from the most different milieus.
Yperlaan 17, 1000 Brussels, became a public kitchen, meeting point and underground scene for everyone and everything spend-it beard and provoked, without being in any way a conventional contextual platform. Who wanted to be part of the scene needed to be in the possession of tokens and how these tokens were to get was up to everyone's personal : a functioning formula for the production of black marketing, cheating, stealing, clever dealing but also exchanging qualities and proper work.

spend-it failed for the most part in offering the qualitative relevant programming hoped for and profound reflection on a pseudo-neo-liberal model, which spend-it eventually only managed to parodise instead of transcend. In retrospective this is to ascribe to the unoccupied position of an apparent curator or curatorial team and consequently a void where normally a sharp and engaged confrontation (starting from the beginning until the end of the 2 year process) should have taken place.
The failure of spend-it, the missing of a clear positioning within a liberally set-up community is nevertheless intriguing and seriously interesting as such and therefore a valid reason for a re-interpretation of the project. Another spend-it affords an adapted objective and the necessary conceptual modifications as well as the supply of a stable partition, articulated and demanding but at the same time tolerating divergencies and increments in order to guarantee the happening to become a more assertive experiment.

[Heike Langsdorf 2007]


related: SPEND A TALK (2006)



initiation and direction :
Antoine Desvigne, Heike Langsdorf
producing artists :
Philippe Beloul, Nathalie Bles, Alice Chauchat, Antoine Desvigne, Franky D.C, Simona Denicolai, Laurent Edmond, Mette Edvardsen, David Helbich, Mette Ingvartsen, Heike Langsdorf, Al Masson, Le Moine Ita, Justin Morin, Berno Odo Polzer, Kurt Ryslavy, ...
and :
Serge Stephan, Marten Spangberg, Ivo Provoost, Various Artists, ...
cooks :
Michael Schmid, Christophe Meierhans, Ula Sickle, ...
pictures made by :
Antoine Desvigne, Nathalie Bles, Franky D.C, others