The First AlChemical Bank of Public Square was a public art project executed in conjunction with the Occupy movement of Fall 2011, in Watertown NY. Setting up a gift economy bank in the center of town, protesters and passers by were asked to engage with a process that transmuted possibility into self actualizing social currency. These were formalized in gift certificates acknowledging the validity of these desires in the public and private spheres. Protesters were asked to “cash in” their picket signs and then redesign new picket signs actualizing their ideas of what they wanted in the present. The local media picked up on the protesters and we made it onto the local news for the North Country that day!
