The Gift and the Ledger

Motivating Questions

Drawing inspiration from Sha Xin Wei’s notion of a “Theatre without Organs”, I developed this workshop in collaboration with my partner, Ylfa Lund Muindi, in order to probe the following questions:

How could we coordinate the production, distribution, and consumption of resources on multiple scales without presuming conventional economic relations such as buyer-seller, consumer-producer, creditor-debtor, employer-employee, landlord-tenant, giver-receiver?
How could we enter into financial arrangements that are as dynamic as we are—that evolve over time as a function of our lives?
Rather than being held in private and issued in bits, how could financial instruments be held in common and issued continuously, under the continuous action of economic actors on a responsive financial infrastructure?

Deeply concerned by climate change, the great t hinning of nature, and the Sixth Extinction, Ylfa and I recognize that we cannot think and prototype alternative socio-economic practices in response to the questions above without also thinking and prototyping alternative socio-ecological practices. Indeed, going even further, Ylfa and I affirm the proposition that ecologies precede, exceed, and succeed all economies, and we look to the socio-ecological practices of non-human others for models and points of departure.

Consider reading my writings on Probing Economics and Trading By Ear for further explications of the questions motivating the Gift and the Ledger.

Scenario

Imagine, if you will, a river flowing through a valley, a fluid in flux, feeding fauna, flora, and fungi along its course.

Imagine walking up to this river and dipping a vessel into it, a small cup. In doing so, you take a measure of water from the river. You now possess a cup of water that you may drink, hold onto, or give away. At the same time, in and through dipping the cup into the river and taking a measure of water, you have also generated some spillage, some overflow. As you walk away from the river and up the hillside with your measure of water, you will notice that, along the course that you take up the hillside, water drips and drops from the cup and from your hands leaving behind little puddles, droplets, and rivulets that feed fauna, flora, and fungi that happen across them.

Now, imagine that you have walked from the river to the hilltop that overlooks it and, having reached the hilltop, you drink the measure of water that you took from the river. After drinking this measure of water, while in the midst of enjoying the hilltop view, very suddenly, you suffer a heart attack and you die. Over the next few hours, days, weeks, scavengers and decomposers consume your dead body, each of them taking from your body some measure of the measure of water that you took from the river. Ay, and each and every scavenger and decomposer produces some spillage, some overflow as they take a measure of your water, leaving a trail of drippings and droppings behind them as they abandon your carcass, and these drippings and droppings feed fauna, flora, and fungi that happen across them.

Then comes the rain. What remains of the puddles, droplets, and rivulets of water that you left behind you as you walked uphill, what remains of the drippings and droppings of the creatures who consumed and decomposed your corpse, and what remains of your last gulp of water in your decomposing carcass—all of this flows back down the hill and returns to the very river from which you took your last measure of water, feeding fauna, flora, and fungi on the re-course, on the return journey to the river.

Ledgering insists upon taking measures of value from a flow. With a cup and hand and a river nearby I can do four things:

First, a cup can be used to take and hold a measure of water from a stream or reservoir: that is to say, the cup can serve as a store of value.
Second, a cup can serve as a unit of account for measures of water taken from a stream or reservoir: for instance, water taken from the river may measure one cup, or a ½ cup, or a ¼ cup, etc.
Third, one can give a cup containing a measure of water to someone else in exchange for something else: that is, the cup can serve as a means of payment.
Fourth, I can give you a full cup of water now if you promise to take the cup back down to a stream or reservoir and bring back a equal measure of water for me: that is to say, the cup can function as a standard of deferred payment.

Gift giving insists upon spillage, overflow, dripping and dropping, and torturing the (re-)course of a flow. A cup becomes a dissipator of value thanks to its in-ability to contain all that it draws from a flow and, concomitantly, its ability to leave behind a fortuitous path of drippings and droppings wherever it goes, a path of drippings and droppings that (re-)courses back to larger flows in such a way that it betrays the landscape in which a flow is situated.

Act I

The Ledger and the Signifying Chain

Spect-actors take turns giving and taking discrete physical tokens from one another. Whenever one spect-actor gives/takes to/from another spect-actor, a third spect-actor ledgers this give/take by physically linking the giving/taking spect-actor to the spect-actor has been given-to/taken-from. Each spectator must either give or take a token from another spect-actor during their turn, they cannot “pass”. At the end of every round of give/take, the spect-actor who possesses the fewest tokens is the spect-actor who “wins” the round, having accumulated the least amount of debt. This “winning” spect-actor decides the order in which each spect-actor takes their turn in the next round.

The workshop facilitators—playing the role of what Augusto Boal termed jokers, serving as emcees, exegetes, and “wild card” actors—will confront the spect-actors with different ecological, economic, and ethical dilemmas/dramas before their turns so that “winning” isn’t necessarily the be-all-end-all for the spect-actors, so that some spect-actors might be motivated to accumulate more instead of less debt.

A photo from the 2020.02.22 staging of The Gift and the Ledger at the Synthesis Center, featuring environments modulated by Garrett Laroy Johnson & Brandon Mechtley. Photo by Megan Patzem. — A photo from the 2020.02.22 staging of *The Gift and the Ledger* at the Synthesis Center, featuring environments modulated by Garrett Laroy Johnson & Brandon Mechtley. Photo by Megan Patzem.

Act II

The Gift and the Tortuous Circle

Spect-actors take turns stretching, twisting, crumpling, bending, and winding a single continuous physical medium so as to loop portions of the medium around themselves. At the end of every round of looping, the spect-actor who has been “looped in” by and with the greatest number of other spect-actors is the spect-actor who “wins” the round, having become the keystone species. This “winning” spect-actor decides the order in which each spect-actor takes their turn in the next round.

Again, the jokers will confront the spect-actors with different ecological, economic, and ethical dilemmas/dramas before their turns so that “winning” isn’t necessarily the be-all-end-all for the spect-actors, so that some spect-actors might be motivated to eschew becoming the keystone species.

Act III

The Distributed Network and the Tortuous Knotwork

Spect-actors play the games from Act I and Act II simultaneously, the two games superposed atop one another. At the end of each round, the spect-actor who wins the Tortuous Circle game determines the order in which individuals must take their turn in the Signifying Chain game and, in turn, the spect-actor who wins the Signifying Chain game determines the order in which individuals must take their turn in the Tortu(r)ous Circle game.

The jokers will confront the spect-actors with different different ecological, economic, and ethical dilemmas/dramas before they take their turns so that “winning” one or both games isn’t necessarily the be-all-end-all for the spect-actors, so that some spect-actors might be motivated to “lose” both games, to accumulate more debt and eschew becoming the keystone species.