As I left Blank to roam the streets with my Book of Debts today, I asked my feet to guide me in the right direction. It’s quite a confronting process but this frontline work needs to be done, so see what works in terms of using this work in non-sanctioned contexts, i.e. outside of Festival / art/performance spaces or even busy urban spaces, as with Liverpool, where there is an umbrella programme – like Giving In to Gift – which acts as an anchor point. It may fail.
People are interested in being asked the question and considering what they might add, but the subject of this work requires time to reflect and then choose to respond, rather than an instant response (although this wasn’t the case in Liverpool, but the context was a busy Saturday shopping centre and time to stop on benches and chat). Thank God for the website, as this offers a totally private alternative, to be used in one’s own time. And yet I am having some fascinating dialogues with people, which would not occur if this were only a digital project.
We are working towards developing a model that crosses borders – that can operate from within the more expected contexts – like Fierce, with whom we will be working in October after some development time up there last month – but that also takes the Book to places where there is no visible reference point. Some artists would run thousands of kilometers from this idea, but for me it is an essential element of the work, and part of also crossing those borders in terms of medium and context and modes of operation both as an artist and as a social being.
I went into one of the pawnbrokers in Portslade today, ‘Money-go-round’ – friendly and kind of bemused at my proposition. They told me they have hundreds of stories, mainly involving other people’s debts, and showed me their list of ‘most used excuses’ for when debts are not repaid and items then pass into the ownership of the shop (see image). There has been a lot in the news recently on the rise of Pawnbrokers (at all socio-economic levels – see this article in The Independent) now that bad credit excludes so many from access to ready cash. It’s interesting how localized an operation this feels, even though it is probably a chain. People bringing in real objects for real cash, an increasing move away from what was becoming so familiar – i.e., access to imaginary money using plastic from people you never meet. They told me they have ‘regulars’, people they are on first name terms with, sometimes bringing in items for absolute essentials, like, literally the fare to work to food for the family. They say they have always had customers with needs like this but that this is of course increasing in frequency.
I know a bit about how pawnbrokers work – like other high-interest creditors, who are accessible to the uncredit-worthy, there is a co-dependency there, and the signing of a contract that you do not know you can keep, but there seems to be no other option available. It is one of my rules when roaming to suspend moral judgment, there is a lot I – or anyone – could get upset about, but for this project to work, when I am in my role, I need to suspend judgment and approach people ‘naked’ -in whatever context they are operating and regardless of political persuasion or their response to me. The Book has blank pages and they need to be open to as broad a spectrum of experiences and perspectives on those experiences as possible. This is how it feels to me. And that in itself is an act of will. Yet something about putting on my coat and carrying my Book, gives me permission to do so – the occupying of a role, as servant, as naïf, as confessor or as whatever is projected into me …
