Diogo da Cruz – WORDCOIN

Diogo da Cruz - WORDCOIN

A free and global speech – something one could dream of while the internet was spreading around our world. A platform for exchange that would enable instantaneous and fair dialogues. Unfortunately, that’s not the case. The freedom of speech brought by the online medium hasn’t been used quite wisely. We don’t have to think much about what we say, as we mostly have an unlimited time to speak (=to type). We tend to read and see what we were searching for, not being confronted with any opposite ideas. Our ideas tend to get lost in the enormous amount of information hosted by the internet. But above all, if we don’t have access to this alternative reality, we are surely set aside from the ongoing discussions. The borderless medium has reenforced the border-full world, whose boundaries are mostly permeable to business and economic exchange. We (=part of us) don’t exchange so many gestures or words in the public space, while online exchanges usually happen within a closed niche. However, we exchange money with many different people on a daily basis, regardless of their race, origin, gender or beliefs. A coin should have a very broad perspective about the world we live in. It is a body that can travel freely across frontiers, being mostly welcomed wherever it goes. WORDCOIN proposes the implementation of a new currency, that will give a literal value to each one’s speech. With the creation of “The Bank for Argumentation’, the costumer-museumgoer has the opportunity to trust his or hers arguments to an institution that can save, invest and trade them, so that one’s speech becomes free by being introduced in a free-market of ideas. This ironic surrender into our society’s notion of value has the goal of showing how valuable our free-speech is, and how poor a human becomes without it. It wants to question the effectiveness of the online medium as instrument for exchange of arguments, and comment the uprising of political leader with poor rhetorics, whose wealthiness supplies the impact of their words. Now, more than ever, argumentation tools are an important weapon into the absurd post-truth era. If facts and reality are not clear anymore, we should only relay in words, as they become extremely valuable. What we think and what we defend should be made clear and dissipated until it lands on the right hands. As art projects need the support from institutions to actually come true, also your ideas can be trusted to The Bank for Argumentation, that will invest in your speech with an interest rate. This idea was presented in Kunstarkaden, the exhibition space of Kulturreferat München, with the creation of a promotional zone, a lounge area and an office space of this new bank. A performance started with Nina Simone’s “I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel to Be Free” follow by a presentation about the concept of this new bank and its odd currency, trying to raise awareness of the relevance and pertinence of such proposal. www.wordcoin.net

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