Buying Time: The Nostalgia-Free History Sale
M. River and T. Whid Art Associates (MTAA)
January 28-March 18, 1997
Citywide via Internet
Buying Time: The Nostalgia-Free History Sale offered art patrons and online shoppers a chance to commemorate the new Internet age with a product attuned to the rapid pace of our time: a video of the buyer ordering that very same video. Using the ability to cheaply videoconference, M. River and T. Whid Art Associates recorded customers stating “I want my time,” and then mailed the videos back to people. The tongue-in-cheek project also commented on the Internet’s ability to offer such an overwhelming array of information to the degree that people could spend hours of their lives surfing websites, as opposed to communicating with the “real” world. The project was a part of Creative Time’s CyberWide series and Port: Navigating Digital Culture, an artnetweb exhibition of networked digital worlds on the Internet.