Julieta Aranda and Anton Vidokle

Julieta Aranda and Anton Vidokle, Time/ Bank, 2010. Photograph by Thierry Bal

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Over the last decade, Julieta Aranda (b.1975, Mexico) and Anton Vidokle (b.1965, Russia), alongside numerous collaborators, have produced a wide range of innovative international initiatives that critically reposition the dominant models of art’s production and distribution. These include e-flux, a web-based resource, publishing and distribution facility that also stages a number of special projects such as unitednationsplaza; a free year-long school based in Berlin, EVR (e-flux video rental); and Night School, a temporary school at the New Museum in New York City.

For Touched, Aranda and Vidokle opened the very first branch of Time/Bank, an initiative drawing on their longstanding interest in autonomous practices and circulation mechanisms. Time/Bank launched in the summer of 2010 as an online platform that allowed participants to trade their time, knowledge and skills, rather than acquire goods and services through the use of money. Time/Bank invited artists, curators, critics, activists, theorists and other cultural practitioners to request, offer and pay for services in Time/Bank hours. When an individual performed a task, he or she earned credit hours that could be banked for use at a later date, donated to another person or contributed to Time/Bank for the development of communal projects.

A little different in appearance from a conventional bank branch, the Liverpool Time/Bank branch included an exhibition of time-currency prototypes designed by a range of international artists and the Time/Bank office – a flexible space where visitors could open a Time/Bank account and engage with the bank’s activities.

Julieta Aranda and Anton Vidokle at Liverpool Biennial 2010

Time/Bank, 2009 – ongoing
Mixed media installation
Exhibited at 52 Renshaw Street