ROTTERDAM.- TENT opened The Value of Nothing art manifestation. In five new projects, a group exhibition, Fieldwork Residencies, and an intensive, in-depth public program, Rotterdam and international artists reflect on our current economies and value systems.

In the aftermath of the global economic crisis, there are a number of increasingly urgent questions: how can we come to a different interpretation of the concept of value in addition to the usual financial and economic criteria? What are the other forms of economic exchange? The Value of Nothing presents artists who add to the current debate on value and economy. They reveal value in places the mainstream market passes by, like Jeanne van Heeswijk’s project in Rotterdam’s Afrikaanderwijk district; or show how trade in a global economy also means a non-monetary cultural exchange, as in Meschac Gaba’s artistic exchange bureau. In their installations, Remco Torenbosch and Iratxe Jaio + Klaas van Gorkum explore the philosophical notions of distribution and (artistic) production, while Antonia Hirsch presents these as an active, informal network.

Topics such as economic inequality and quantification of value are explored in new projects by Helmut Smits, who controversially classifies youngsters for a football game, Paolo Cirio, who has made a tax avoidance website, and Jonas Lund’s analogue algorithm that maps the value of the exhibition itself.

Bill Balaskas, Claire Fontaine, and Priscila Fernandes show the inevitable effects of capitalism and consumerism, and Jonas Staal reveals the relationship between recession and construction of the world’s largest buildings.

Gil & Moti, Roel Roscam Abbing, Kym Ward, Oblique International, and Weronika Zielinska will each temporarily join a company in Rotterdam. They will develop proposals for radically different ways of addressing topics such as hospitality, the notion of work or the politics behind the infrastructure of the Internet. The proposals will be presented to the companies and the public during the exhibition’s Fieldwork Friday event on 3 and 24 October.

For the public program, curator and writer Nat Muller has organised Breaking the Bank, a two- part event in which, with academics, journalists, and other experts, she explores how art, value, and the global economy are interrelated. In a research project, Erasmus University College students will discuss and explore the exhibition’s topics.