SAL RANDOLPH
Free Money & Other Urban Money Actions
Date: Saturday 9.19
Start Time: 12:00pm
Location: Einstein Auditorium, Rm. 105, Barney building
I leave money in public spaces for strangers to find. A dollar here, a five there, a ten someplace else – each bill with an anonymous note (a brief statement of fact), tucked into the cash dispenser of an ATM or slipped into a newspaper, or wedged in a doorway, or between packages of cookies in a deli, or through a mail slot.
Unlike other recent work of mine involving money, in these actions I cut off the possibility of knowing the fate of the what I give away. It is meant to be truly “free” – unencumbered by gratitude or obligation, as much a sacrifice as a gift. I genuinely don’t know who will find the money, or what they will make of it.
At this workshop I’ll tell the story of Free Money and talk about what it’s like to leave money and other things in public space. I’ll also hand out some free money and invite participants to join me in infiltrating the urban environment.
Sal Randolph lives in New York and produces artworks involving gift economies, social architectures, one-on-one interactions and public spaces. She is the founder of Opsound, an open sound exchange of copyleft music (opsound.org). Other work includes The Free Biennial (freebiennial.org) and Free Manifesta (freemanifesta.org) which brought together several hundred artists in open shows of free art in the public spaces of New York and Frankfurt, Germany, as well as Free Words (freewords.org) in which 3000 copies of a free book have been infiltrated into bookstores and libraries worldwide by a network of volunteers. Her Free Money distributions have recently taken place at 16 Beaver Street, Creative Time’s Democracy in America, the LIVE Biennale, Chongburi International Art Exhibition, Glowlab, and the Figment Festival as well as the urban environments of New York and Honolulu.
