For a while now, Souther and I have been dreaming about an art project that would allow us to travel, see inspiring places and people, and also give us the opportunity to collaborate again and make something memorable.
After a lot of pow-wows about it, we came up with the idea of The Trading Tortoise, a traveling art installation/trading post that we would set up in different communities around America to barter objects and stories with people. In exchange, they get something special from another place we’ve been. Either something we’ve collected ourselves or traded for.
We’re both collectors. We really cherish items and love it when something cool we find also has an unexpected story behind it. I guess this is our way of sharing that feeling with other people.
Everything we get, we’ll tag with the name of the person, their location and a trade number and then document it on our website before we trade it again somewhere down the road. You’ll then be able to go on our website and find out where the item you traded for came from and also where your item traveled to. In a way, we would be documenting America through the objects, stories, and creations people traded us. Connecting people in different places in America through a network of objects and stories.
It’s been a dream for so long and now we’re finally ready to make it happen. We just launched a Kickstarter project yesterday to try and raise the funds needed for building the Trading Tortoise and the trip. We tinkered with it for a long time before launching, so I hope what we presented on the site makes sense. We have 18 days to raise the funds we need, not a lot of time, but I’m hopeful. If you like our idea, we hope you’ll share it with a friend or two. Here is the link to the Kickstarter site.
We think this could be something really special and we hope other people will believe in it too.
Filed under: adventure, art, travel
