Paper short abstract:

Aturquesada is an object-based performance project and street interventions. Artist, soJin Chun negotiates and barters with bystanders the value of monochromatic art objects, reflecting on the process of allocating monetary value based on commodities of desire in a global economic system.

Paper long abstract:

On "Speculative Futures: Social Practice, Cognitive Capitalism and/or the Triumph of the Capital", Matias Viegner examines Martha Rosler's Meta Monumental Garage Sale staged inside the Museum of Modern Art (New York, 2012). As the title suggests, the installation takes the form of a massive garage sale, using second-hand items, elevating their status and value. If artists can appropriate trash to transform and reintroduce them into the art market, then it demonstrates how "trash itself is an integral part of capitalist economies." Trash also represents the temporary fulfillment of fleeting desires.

Objects produced within the global capitalist system have a transnational trajectory, including the extraction of natural resources, their manufacturing through cheap labour and their introduction into the market. Consumer objects take on migration histories, as they witness the conditions of production and their life in the consumer market.

In response, the project Aturquesada, takes other people's trash bringing them back onto the streets to consumers, through a system of barter. By branding recycled objects through a monochromatic scheme in the colour tealquoise, (a term used to describe an ambiguous shade of green between turquoise and teal), the objects are repurposed as art, while being removed from an art context that would reinforce their value. This project raises questions such as: how do objects become accomplices to class distinction through their production? How does the global capitalist market create narratives of desire and representation through the fabrication of objects?