Trade Test Site
– Exchange Library Shop & Cafë
In the café customers can shop in accordance with two different principles: Time-banking or Direct Exchange. If the customer chooses to pay by means of Timebanking, the price of coffee is not calculated in money, but in minutes. Customers pay for coffee or cake by working at the café for a specific number of minutes. The other option is Direct Exchange. Customers can get their coffee in exchange for jam or other comestibles that they have produced in their own kitchen. The jam will then become part of the offerings available at the café and be bartered away to other
customers. The network of people who exchange their home-made goods for bread, coffee or other items from the café will form a collective production community. The attribution of value and the calculation of the ‘prices’ of products will be based on mutual agreements, trust, and join decisions on the value of a given product in relation to the work done to produce that product.
By accepting labour and home-made goods as payment, the project paves the way for discussing the value of work and economic transactions that are not part of the regular market, and of products and services which are not made for the market.
© Lise Tovesdatter Skou