#EXSTRANGE is a collection of artworks conceived by contemporary artists to be encountered, auction-style, by the passersby in one the largest global* marketplaces on the web

Have you ever thought that your art patron could be a stranger, a passerby in the realm of agglomerated commodities online? While browsing through the variety of categories offered by one of the pioneering online marketplaces in search for something to buy, this stranger might stumble across your artwork and pause her search.

Who will this stranger be? What form of exchange could take place beside the seller-to-buyer transaction, the fundraiser-to-backer association, or the peer-to-peer swap?

Over the course of a 7-day auction-as-artwork, the relationship with that stranger could take unexpected forms. She might become a more intimate figure to you, regardless of geographical location, class, education and belief system; or she might remain an anonymous onlooker.

The web-based platform on which you will present your artwork is plainly commercial, promoting quantifiable exchanges with clear transactional language. Yet this system made of categories, rating and feedback could be based on a different rhetoric; one that is countercurrent and goes beyond the celebration of the commodified digital artefact, or the mere promotion of creative practices hidden behind the mantra of sustainability.

What would you offer to that passerby? How would you talk to her?

The category you will choose for your auction will become your exhibition context; perhaps helping you with the dilemma of labelling your practice using the commonly accepted definitions of medium-specific, post-media or inter-media art for your public. The passerby, unaware of your art, will be navigating through the categories of the marketplace—from Tickets & Experiences and Pet Supplies to Wearable Devices or Wholesales & Jobs—, seeking for that something that they delineate and she wants to possess.

How would you define a relationship that takes place in this system of classification—as built on trust, fiction, or provocation?

The #EXSTRANGE website will function as an aggregator of all the artists’ work conceived to be encountered, auction-style, by the passersby of this online marketplace. It will be a database that will keep your artwork in the archives of the online public realm, preserving your exchanges with the strangers who browse for transactional commodities online.

We wish you best of luck with your auction-as-artwork, The #EXSTRANGE** team

* Please note that the ‘global’ operations of this marketplace are located in 27 countries only. More details at

http://pages.ebay.in/globaltrade/international.html

** #EXSTRANGE is organised to coincide with the 10th anniversary of the project eBayaDay, which was devised to explore the use of an online marketplace as a curated art venue.