From an e mail conversation between Kathrin and Adam:

E MAIL FROM KATHRIN

HONESTY BOX
I left quite a few Höfer Goods and Horsemilk products with Michael last Friday for the Rochelle School Honesty Box. Also left green myvillages.org frames with a brief introtext to go into the box together with the produce.
Michael wants to put things in today, and watch how fast which product sells.
We made some Shoreditch prices and let s see if it sells.

I like the multiplication of the HONESTY BOX, e.g. as Wapke suggests at the Witte de WIth in Rotterdam, and in her village.
I also would like to start one in our office at public works, and maybe one next spring in Höfen.
There could be some very simple guidelines for the extension of those boxes:
- they happen at places where we are active ( a similar rule that Wapke has for her soil drillings)
- they are made from recycled material on location

The growing number of boxes can also be seen as an extension of the "Village Kiosk" proposal.

E MAIL RESPONSE FROM ADAM

Karen and Nina are doing an Honesty Stall in their Northern art prize show in Leeds next month and are bringing/making a bunch more Japanese stuff.

Name and network would be good to formalise, maybe 'Pay what you think is right' is a term we have used.

I am making some japanese styled tea bowls centred around the idea of adding value to objects based on the Japanese concept of Meingei - very close to the idea of value in art. So the idea is the bowl is valueless until it is selected by a collector, it then becomes high value. The rules of mingei are all about how the object is produced in the first place, ie anonymous, part of mass production by hand, in normal use etc. I am interested in the idea that the purchaser basically pays what they think they are worth, ie how much value they bring to the object - sort of like therapy language, invest in yourself etc.
So maybe the honesty stall could be called 'pay what you are worth'

Also local to us there has opened an honesty cafe, pay what your wallet can afford or exchange work in the garden - seems to be working very well.

I had a chat with the design museum the other day I think they would be interested in having a stall too - maybe we need to put a cap on the number as it gets hard to service so many in an interesting way.

RE product: I would like to start to generate some cross over products, I am doing a schnapps bottle with Christoph Keller. Should we try to make this for Rochelle?

This thing of value starts to get complicated though even for example the rice has to be expensive, it is anyway and with shipping its unreasonable expensive so?

Posted by Kathrin Böhm on 07/11/07 at 15:34 : 0 Comments

A weird night last night at the Royal Academy – a dinner for the sponsors club to generate interest in the ‘Contemporary Season’ – some discussion on a title for this with Sir Norman Rosenthal suggesting ‘Unique, Unique’ so unique they named it twice actually his suggestion was only the first bit, problem there is that contemporary art is very far from being unique and it sounds like a hairdresser in Kirby Stephen – I quite liked the ‘In Season’ suggestion - bitches on heat, an opportunity for hunting something and fashion. The complexity of the event was kind of interesting, there was a lots of congratulating each other for getting knighthoods, married to ideas about bohemian creatives rocking out. Several people were wearing medals, very cheap looking medals, looked like they bought them at a fair and were wearing them for a joke but I think they where in fact the officer bearers for the RA, like president and so on. At the beginning of the evening there was a standing toast to the Queen, then there was the use of the word fuck and then some standing toasts to the secretarial staff of the Sponsors Club. Tracy Emin appeared to be hosting the evening and as one toast master stated – ‘later on Tracy will be doing some very exciting things with David Thorp’ what like folding him into a swan. Or as it was in reality prompting him to mention money – which was what the dinner was about – actually Tracy was very responsible and seemed more like arts administrator than any of the professionals.

Posted by Adam Sutherland on 03/11/07 at 23:44 : 0 Comments

Wapke started to film the handling of rural produce during the Hoefer Waren weekend, for the Grizedale tv project in January.
Ingrid Mueller made some fresh butter on the day to be sold together with the cream spoons.
And Paulina tried the sandals from Kobe which were part of this year's exhibition.

Posted by Kathrin Böhm on 10/10/07 at 07:32 : 0 Comments

Topics: 'handling'

Hoefer Waren was again a big success - very well visited, all sold out and, a rare thing in the village, no negative voices (yet). We had 2 tables with jam, juice, schnaps and dried herbs. And 2 tables with new produce, such as the lamps, bags and the horsemilk product range from Wapke's sister in Friesland.

Thanks again to Wapke for driving all the way from Rotterdam to Hoefen to make the event international!

Posted by Kathrin Böhm on 10/10/07 at 07:19 : 1 Comment

Topics: 'village shop'

the empty vessel

Recently talked at a conference in Readin’ with juneaus and Nina Pope – Nina invited Mike Ostler, a member of a participatory audience from her Battaville project www.bata-ville.com Mike made this great speech saying almost the exact same thing that the village leader from the Toge Japan project had said to the Echigo Triennale director at the end of the Grizedale 7 Samurai project www.seven.samurai.jp which was basically ‘we don’t want any more of this art where artist make their work for us to appreciate, we want to be involved, to participate, for the work to help us express our ideas and feelings’. Mike was specific he specifically did’nt want any more Angel of the North type things – nudes of old Etonians in your face.

Mike also introduced himself as the only pure member of the public at the conference (although later in the pub he did expose a past with considerable art/theatre involvement so maybe not quite so pure). Anyway it was good to hear it said, hard to really assess the response, generally positive but a little in the line of that magic moment a few years ago when at a Lib Dem conference someone got up and berated them all for being a bunch of wishy-washy, Guardian reading, overly reasonable people, about as much use a wet wipe in a sewage works - she received a standing ovation, ‘oh quite, quite, you know she is so right, marvelous’.

The conference was a university thing and there were these research people ex artists whose names I half recalled from sometime in the dim art past and they talked about stuff that you just take for granted - just read as read, the autonomy of the art object got a good going over - like someone cares, all that exploring space balls – a planet controlled by an autonomous being able to inflict pain at will – Phil and Ben (juneaus) slept and giggled like a couple of dormice. I thought about how little actual art face activity supported this academic edifice. Phil and Ben twiddling away, scratching a bare living subsidised by endless children’s workshops. Phil and Ben, Nina and Karen with a great upside down pyramid of crapademics balancing on their shoulders, vastly well paid (40k and long holidays, pressing their own Olive oil in their Tuscan villas) with multiple eastern European research assistants in Bikinis, hanging off them like the army motorbike display team. All that money and education, all those students - 3 years of study each, now strung out to 6 years – 6 years - Jesus your life is practically over by then. I watched all the entirely female audience (well it was a conference on engaged practice, what do you expect) making notes about exploring the gallery, considering the corner of the space, dealing with the floor, the autonomy of the art object, the artist, autonomy or hectonomy, or is that a planet ruled by an ancient Greek deity called Hectonomy able to inflict pain at…..

I thought about how little the whole art thing is, how inconsequential, things described as important actually being about as important as renewing your lip gloss. An artist has often no more than one idea, executed every so often – I mean bear in mind how many times you could do most of these ideas if you had an audience, like hundreds of times a year - easily even if it was just you - BB King has played over 300 gigs a year for the past 50 years. But without demand you have to limit supply and build the edifice out of stratagems and platforms, chairs and CEO’s, consultants and marketing, development, research practice.

Posted by Adam Sutherland on 06/10/07 at 13:44 : 1 Comment

Topics: ''

Just arrived in Höfen, the vilalge I m from, for the last preparations to do with the launch of the Höfer Goods 2007. We met this afternoon to compile all the home made goodies, label them and to discuss logistics for the weekend.
Prices were a huge issue - how much something should/could/shouldn't cost.
It's all rather cheap, a jar of jam for 90p, homemade juice for £1 ...... it's the products we designed and produced together which seems pricey in that context. The porcelain spooon for £7 and the jar lamp for £ 20. I promised to put some of the produce in the Grizedale honesty box at Rochelle School to test some London prices on them.

Posted by Kathrin Böhm on 02/10/07 at 21:03 : 0 Comments

Topics: 'village shop'

Posted by Kathrin Böhm on 28/09/07 at 22:08 : 0 Comments

Topics: 'proposal' 'village shop'

Posted by Kathrin Böhm on 28/09/07 at 22:06 : 0 Comments

Topics: 'proposal' 'village shop'

Posted by Kathrin Böhm on 28/09/07 at 22:05 : 0 Comments

Topics: 'proposal' 'village shop'

Posted by Kathrin Böhm on 28/09/07 at 22:02 : 0 Comments

Topics: 'proposal' 'village shop'