By Kaitlin Ugolik
Special to DNAinfo
LOWER EAST SIDE — Julieta Aranda stood in the harsh light of her basement convenience store and attempted to explain her business model in a way customers could understand.
"People who have given time can come redeem their hours for goods," said Aranda, in perhaps her most succinct description of the Time Store she runs with creative collaborator and business partner Anton Vidokle.
Aranda, 35, and Vidokle, 45, opened the Time Store earlier this month in the basement of the E-Flux art gallery at 41 Essex Street. Although both owners are multimedia artists, they insist their latest venture is not an exhibition. It's an attempt to create an alternative economy built around a currency called "hour notes" that people can accrue by providing services for one another like translating, teaching or writing.
Once a person has enough hour notes, they can either trade them for commodities in person at the store or go online, to shop for goods and services in a sort of alternative to e-Bay or Craigslist.
The listings are grouped by categories like communication, transportation, food and shelter. Users list a service required and an estimate of how much time it will take, or offer a service and an amount of time they’re willing to spend on it.
"The idea is to make it not just simply barter like, 'I do something for you, you do something for me.' But maybe I do something for you but you don’t need anything from me; what you really want is hour notes." Vidokle said.
Aranda and Vidokle hope their efforts will encourage a long-term alternative economy in the Lower East Side, which could continue long after their Time Store closes in February 2011.
For example, there’s a post from "PoorMarx" under their website's Shelter tab, asking for "a couch, cot, closet or corner to sleep in" for 60 hours. Whoever takes him up on that will be able to log those 60 hours in their online account and either spend them by requesting a service from someone else, or turn them into hour notes to use at the Time Store.
The concept of an alternative economy like a time bank or a time store dates back for centuries, and featured in an 1830s anarchist economy and a 1920s German movement called "emergency money."
But the most practical model for what Aranda and Vidokle hope to achieve is the alternative economy sustained by Ithaca HOURs, a time currency created by community organizer Paul Glover in upstate New York in 1992 that still operates today. The currency is accepted at 500 establishments ranging from food stores to a health care co-op.
Lower East Side residents aren't confident that it will catch on as successfully here.
"It's a very nice idea and I'm all in favor of it, but realistically I don't think it will work," said Yoav Peled, a political science professor at Tel Aviv University on sabbatical in New York, who attended the Time Store opening.
"There have been many attempts like that, and eventually they don't work because the capitalist system is stronger."
Aranda and Vidokle believe that reaching out to the art community at the beginning will help build the foundation of the "honor system" kind of set-up. She envisions branches of the Time Bank across the world, operating in their own local context and assisting travelers who have hour notes to spend.
Though Vidokle is adamant that this type of economy would better serve consumers than the way the U.S. system works now, and is determined to see how far this experiment can go, Aranda tries not to take it too seriously.
"It has maybe the appeal of play somehow, which is a good place to start things from," she said. "If we will succeed or not, that remains to be seen. But let's see how far along one can push this kind of thing."
