Exchange Library

Exchange Library is a cooperative store operated on a 1:1 scale by the artist Lise Skou in Aarhus, northern Denmark. The cooperative is based on exchange between members. They don’t buy or sell things, but lend them to one another. Membership in the library costs a modest fee (about $10 USD per month), in exchange for which members receive access to its resources: tools, clothing, and local food. If you need tools, instead of buying them in the supermarket you can borrow them from the library and then return them. In the case of food, the rule is barter and fair exchange: if you “borrow” cookies, you can hardly return them in the same state. Instead, you can contribute some jam or fruit from your own garden. The cooperative also operates beyond the local level, transporting goods using free space in people’s baggage when they travel between Aarhus and other places. The membership fees are used to maintain the library and to provide modest pay for the couriers and staff of the library. The cooperative is managed democratically by all members. The pay depends only on the amount of work performed, not the type of work or the experience, gender, or profession of the person performing it. Exchange Library is an experiment with alternative economies, for which Lise Skou makes use of the possibilities offered by the art world. But the goal of the cooperative is to achieve liberation from the system of public grants and to create an independent artistic habitat, maintained by the commitment of the cooperative members. Exchange Library is the fruit of a quest inspired by feminist economics for more equitable systems of work, exchange, and the distribution of goods.

The report presnted in exhibition consists of a poster licensed by the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw for the duration of the exhibition. Courtesy Lise Skou.