EXCHANGE CAFE
Info:
2013, furniture, currency, educators, tea, milk, honey dimensions variable
System:
OurGoods.org
Texts:
Conversations: What is a successful project?,
BOMB (2015),
Caroline Woolard Career Narrative (2017),
Caroline Woolard Work Sample (2016),
Critical Writing about Caroline Woolard's Work,
MoMA Studio: Exchange Cafe reference book,
Proposal for Free/Open/Libre Art,
Solidarity Art Worlds,
So you want to start a platform cooperative...,
The Brooklyn Quarterly (2013)
Media:
MoMA: Exchange Cafe
At Exchange Cafe, tea, milk, and honey could only be purchased with Resources, a currency that circulated the demands and desires of visitors. Exchange Cafe was developed in collaboration with MoMA’s Education Department after a year long residency at MoMA called Artists Experiment.
http://www.moma.org/visit/calendar/exhibitions/1364
Video by me of this work in progress: https://vimeo.com/112338761
Caroline Woolard, installation view of Exchange Cafe, 2013. Courtesy of the artist and MoMA: Artists Experiment. Photo by Ryan Tempro.
Correspondence from 2013
Exchange Cafe is a space for dialog about critical exchange, beekeeping, prison abolition, feral trade, process, and Fluxus. We are also open at 4 West 54th Street (the free entrance) every Thursday-Sunday from 1-5pm, and Fridays from 1-8pm.
Today at 3pm: in the spirit of transparency, Pablo Helguera, Sarah Kennedy, Sheetal Prajapati and I will be in conversation (moderated by Amy Whitaker) about the process of making Exchange Cafe. More information is here: http://www.moma.org/visit/calendar/events/18283
This Friday, we are open late, from 1 until 8. Join a sewing circle, hear an impromptu presentation, get a resource book from Arts and Labor, or make the space your own (we have tables, books, paper, pens, wifi, air conditioning, and tea).
Next Thursday, the 20th, at 1:30pm: Jon Hendricks will be at the Cafe to talk about the relationship between Fluxus and exchange practices. http://www.moma.org/visit/calendar/exhibitions/1364
On Friday, the 21st, from 6:30-8pm: Shane Alsan Selzer, Ted Purves, and I will give short presentations followed by a conversation (moderated by Sheetal Prajapati) about critical exchange. http://www.moma.org/visit/calendar/tickets/events/18285
June 30th, Exchange Cafe will have a CLOSING PARTY from 3-5pm with an awareness raising ice cream social brought by Milk Not Jails. Find your inspiration from your love of small family farms and/or your love of prison abolition and throw some heavenly cream into the mix! http://www.moma.org/visit/calendar/events/18286
Hoping for dialog,
Caroline
Exchange Cafe
4 West 54th Street, NYC
MENU
HOURS
Thursday-Sunday: 1-5pm
Friday: 1-8pm
ABOUT
At Exchange Café, you will be greeted by waitstaff with direct experience working in, with, and for solidarity economies. You will be offered products with political biographies: tea carried across borders, milk distributed by prison abolitionists, and honey gifted by bees. On the wall, an emergent publication about one-on-one engagement invites contributions, and TheExchangeArchive.com shows that artworks emerge in dialog between people, not in solitary isolation. With the café as a learning format, education happens in relationship to lived experience-- waitstaff Lauren Melodia and Tychist Baker are organizers for Milk Not Jails, Kenneth Edusei is an organizer for participatory budgeting in Brooklyn, and Amelia Winger-Bearskin, Forest Purnell, and Carla Aspenberg are artists engaged in practices of reciprocity. Exchange Cafe is a social space dedicated the power of one-to-one agreement.
