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Exchange Values on the Table

‘Exchange Values on the Table’ [EVT] is a major new development of the long-term social sculpture project ‘Exchange Values: images of invisible lives’ [EVIII]. In 2007 [for ‘Social Sculpture today’, Basel], a 5-meter, UN-like table for 30 participants was developed alongside experiments to enable a conscious experience of ‘imaginal work’ and imagination’s role in transformation.

The earliest version ‘Reading the World Economy in the Banana Skins’ [Hamburg 1974] was the basis for in-depth research that Sacks undertook [1992-1996] in collaboration with small Caribbean producers and UK and Caribbean Fair-Trade and Sustainability NGOs. This led to the commissioning of EVIII and its first large-scale installation [NOW Festival, 1996]. In this form, EVIII was presented at 10 venues in several countries, receiving funding in excess of £45,000. At all venues, including the World Summit for Sustainable Development [2002], participatory discussion fora, alongside the installation, involved people from many sectors and communities, local, national and global. In a UNESCO Summit paper [Stockholm, 1998] Sacks articulated perspectives on the connection between aesthetics and responsibility, arising from two years exploring the EVIII arena with farmers and consumers.

In 2011 [Voegele Kulturzentrum, Zurich], based on connective practices and ‘instruments of consciousness’ evolved through EVIII, Sacks devised a new set of practices ‘at the table’ in which participants directly engage with social sculpture’s ‘invisible materials’. A handbook accompanying EVT scales-up the social sculpture process, making it a ‘kit’ for use by others, independent of Sacks’ presence. EVT offers significant new understandings and processes – including ‘active listening’, ‘active seeing’, and the ‘responsible participant’ instead of facilitator– opening up new understandings of ‘agency’ and ways of becoming ‘agents of change’. Subsequent developments like ‘Earth Forum’ and the 2013 book, 'Die Rote Blume’, evidence EVT’s role in Sacks’ research-practice, in particular, in relation to scaling-up an in-depth, transformative, participatory practice.