C.A.C.A.O Cooperativa Autónoma de Comercio Artístico de Obras

Self-portrait

C.A.C.A.O. (Cooperativa Autónoma de Comercio Artístico de Obras) es una iniciativa del artista José Miguel González Casanova que propone fortalecer la autosustentabilidad de la producción cultural independiente, a través del reconocimiento y la articulación de numerosos proyectos de creadores culturales y sus públicos sin intermediarios. (http://cooperativacacao.blogspot.mx/2013/05/descripcion.html)

Description

The Autonomous Art Trade Cooperative (Cooperativa Autónoma de Comercio Artísitco de Obras, CACAO) is a project working on forming a network of independent producers in Mexico City’s creative industry with the purpose of shaping new channels for cultural and symbolic exchange. The project was created in 2013 by José Miguel González Casanova, artist, UNAM professor, head of Seminario de Medios Múltiples (SMM, an educational platform for social art projects) and Banco Intersubjetivo de Deseos (“Intersubjective Wish Bank”).

From November 15th to December 11th of 2013, CACAO called on artists and creatives to take part in a public market at the Chopo University Museum (Museo Universitario del Chopo), through trading activities, discussions, workshops and exhibits. For the exchange of goods and services, the project minted its own currency, called CACAO.

CACAO aims to foster relationships and promote projects that avoid exploitation as much as possible, embrace an awareness of their environment and pursue consistency at every stage, from the collection of resources, to production and distribution, fostering horizontal working relationships and fair trade, as well as forms of knowledge integrating sensitivity and identity into a creative and educational process.

Producers and artists were selected by a jury whose values and criteria took into consideration quality of goods & services, creativity & social engagement in projects form different fields (visual arts, crafts, graphic, textile, industrial and fashion design, independent publishing, urban farming, cuisine, independent music production and social technologies).

The project also called on putting together a directory of independent creatives with the purpose of bringing together a series of initiatives with common values regarding the production and distribution of goods and services, in order to form a support & communication network to help promote such projects.

Links

URL: http://cooperativacacao.blogspot.mx/

Wayback Machine:https://web.archive.org/web/*/http://cooperativacacao.blogspot.mx/