SYMBOL gotowe/ sklep - trading
Lublin 2015
For the action in my SYMBOL gotowe/ shop in Lublin I placed a stack of paper and a stamp for the words 'SYMBOL gotowe' on an empty counter with an equally empty display area. Another motif are the accumulated golden balls that were developed for the series SYMBOL gotowe/ trading and that now create a further level of meaning on the back wall.
Standing behind the counter, I was wearing coat and cap, the integral elements for the activities in all my Polish projects. The process was started with the participants, who one after another approached the counter and handed me an object already in their possession. I received it and prepared the paper by stamping the words ‘SYMBOL gotowe’ onto it. I carefully began to wrap up the object, following its specific form and contours, tracing its pure physis. An important part of the process was the attention jointly fixed on the ‘sleeve’ which adapted itself to the object, while at the same time functioning as image carrier. I then elevated the wrapped-up object highly into the field of vision and delayed the moment of delivery, so that the participants, during a shared moment of lingering could read the words ‘SYMBOL gotowe’, the ‘display’ of the object wrapped up by me.
In the very zone, where the motion of exchange between physical, real merchandise and money as value equivalent usually takes place, the short moment of transition is expanded and an attentive action is practised, which transports things apparently incompatible into the dissolving paradox. The conscious presence jointly created is the ‘new value’.