“Anger as Currency” takes the form of a lecture performance to investigate the currency and value of anger or frustration. What is negotiated for stories and feelings of sentiments? How are movements and technologies channeling these exchanges? Within the context of major unemployment due to the pandemic, all while undergoing a political climate of extreme unrest, I used anger as currency.

The excess anger and frustration combined with the lack of USD that most US Americans faced made for a perfect reason to use anger as currency. Using a system similar to an auction, I asked the audience to use their personal stories of anger to bid on artworks of mine, such as a zine, a painting, and a multi-panel collage—each artwork worth more than the one before it, therefore needing an angrier story to win. I used a tier system of three levels of anger. Each level of anger was introduced with a lip-sync. I used a personal story on motherhood, a monologue from the television show Pose, and a speech by US Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to exemplify the level of anger necessary to win the bid. After setting the tone with each lip-sync, I led the audience in a free-writing session, encouraging them to summon their anger. After two to five minutes of writing, I asked for bids through the Zoom chat box. They could bid by writing “ME” in the chat box after the introduction of the artwork. Once I accepted a bid, the bidder wrote their angry story directly to me, and only me. Then I read their angry story to the audience, all while the bidder remained silent and anonymous.

This cycle of lip-sync, free-writing, artwork background, bidding, storytelling, and commentary of the angry story continued three times over until the end of the lecture-performance. The winning bidders received their artwork free of charge through the post. In doing this, I was using myself as a vessel for my community’s anger and validating their anger by giving them artwork in exchange. This was a way to reframe capitalism by negotiating their worth with their sentiments instead of money. The performance was 90 minutes long and fifteen minutes of Q&A after.