Trade School is an inventive, artist-run, barter-economy school where I got to teach Business School for Artists in January and February. One common artist quality I adore is material resourcefulness--people who think to make anything, out of anything. Along those lines, check out the Trade School chairs:
They made the chair tops. The base is a paint bucket plus a tool belt (to provide notebook pockets).
Like most very good things in life, teaching at Trade School came about in an entirely roundabout way--with an awareness that it could easily not have come to pass. It all started when I went to David Tze's Egg Nog Party, despite an enormous blizzard. (Had the wind been moving the other direction I would not have gone, because the walk home felt like what I imagine to be a high-end exfoliation treatment, dermabrasion by sleet.)
Also relevant, I chatted with Ben who was the chaperone of the Egg Nog Party. And here is where I have to explain how the space worked. Ben was part of the Canadian brothers and friends who kept a graphic design office in the back of a storefront space on Norfolk Street. The front of the store space, they would turn into something different every six or so weeks, as part of a project called Grand Opening. It was, alternately, a Vegas style wedding chapel, a drive-in movie with one car, or a tree-trimming party space. At that point, the space was overtaken by a massive tree, sporting large silver balls that still had K-Mart price tags and garlands that looked like they had been made out of Excel spreadsheets. A huge glass bowl full of egg nog sat on a table and not much else. I got to talking with Ben -- the worse for wear from their holiday party the night before -- and got put in touch with Caroline, an organizer of Trade School.
Just to give a sense, at the Trade School opening party, they had this cake:
The barter for a piece of cake was to pose for a Sears-Roebuck-style school photo against the backdrop of a heavy red velvet curtain. There was another cake for which you were supposed to exchange a dance move -- which I did (Lord knows where those are on the Internet now).
My first class--and I taught three--was the second one of the whole school, right after a class on mushrooms. As I was setting up to teach, Caroline made the most wonderful quinoa and buttery obscure mushroom dish. The room was full, and there was great energy. I went through the whole lecture, best summed up on the Trade School blog -- in Caroline's words:
"Last night, in Trade School’s second class, Amy Whitaker shed light on the current economic crisis and what terms like “Externalities” and “Derivatives” mean. Starting with the classic Supply versus Demand graph from high school, Amy moved to Game Theory, hedging bets, and the funding system employed by major non-profit art institutions around the world." Caroline even posted a link to look up corporate filings on the Securities and Exchange website.
As she also very kindly and aptly summed up the course: "I love Amy Whitaker because she wants artists to understand banking as much as she wants bankers to understand art." Exactly.
After class, I had enjoyed it so much I forgot people would give me things to represent the other half of the barter. I got lots of vegetarian recipes, including some that were basically art objects:
After I changed my barter list to include stories of what you would do, "Pie in the Sky," if you could do anything, I got this dreamy life plan:
I got heaps of music recommendations, and since I hadn't specified what I actually listened to, some lists intimidatingly included Fugazi.
A Japanese film crew came to the first class. (They subsequently ran a segment that included a lengthy "exit interview" with a class attendee who was actually my sister.) They stuck around to document my other barter: being taught to use Twitter.
My first tweet was going to be that a Japanese film crew was watching me learn Twitter (with this photo attached):
But then they said since their broadcast had not yet aired, best not to mention it, making me immediately join the legions of boring twitterers.
I returned to teach two more times after that first lecture. The energy varied -- it is always more energizing to reinvent the wheel, or feel like you are, and it is a process to balance being prepared with inviting the sort of openendedness that makes the class exciting.
The last class, I taught "the banking crisis" which included a review of the Lehman Brothers financials. I had to get a friends and family tutorial myself beforehand to understand the balance sheet (thank you! you know who you are). Basically, if I single category in a single line of their mortage holdings section had been misvalued by 25%, it would have left a $5 billion hole in their balance sheet. Yikes.
It had been in 2004 when I had first taught the class, when I gave lunchtime talks to fellow painters at the Slade. After a five-year hiatus, I realized I truly love teaching economics to artists.
I am hoping to continue to give these talks, at Trade School (Redux) and elsewhere. Here are Caroline and Louise, Trade School founders:
Here is an example of their innate material resourcefulness, a hardtop wheelie suitcase used as a dish drying rack:
Here they are being interviewed for Japanese television after that first class:
And here is a link to their Kickstarter project to fund a reincarnation of Trade School next fall:
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/OurGoods/trade-school-0
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