Byproduct: Token Conversations by Invisible Venue & José Faus

Token Conversations, a socially engaged art project by Kansas City-based artist José Faus produced in collaboration with Invisible Venue, implements conversations with laundromat clientele in the production of a social document that encapsulates pressing social issues. The project explores the role of the artist in facilitating public discourse and the use of a laundromat as a generative public platform.

In late March, Faus conducted office hours in residence at the Walnut Place Laundromat (4241 Walnut Street, Kansas City) and spoke with locals about art and the role of an artist in a community, especially topics that related to social issues including the financial crisis, domestic policies, racism and/or gun violence, among other topics. A “laundry list” of topics was available or participants offered a topic of their choosing; participants received laundry tokens in exchange for their participation. Prints and a series of silk-screened recycled t-shirts, produced and laundered on site, was available for free distribution at the culminating public event on Friday, March 22, 6 – 8pm.

– Token Conversation with Walle and Faus: Listen here

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Bogota, Columbia native José Faus is an artist, writer and poet based in Kansas City, MO. More than two dozen of his mural projects are featured throughout the Kansas City area, as well as in Mexico and Bolivia, for which he received a cultural ambassador grant from the U. S. State Department. Faus is a founding member of Kansas City’s Latino Writers Collective; his writing has been featured in a number of anthologies including Primera Pagina: Poetry From the Latino Heartland and Cuentos del Centro: Stories From the Latino Heartland, as well as Present Magazine and Poets & Writers. In 2011 Faus received the Poets & Writers Maureen Egen Writer’s Exchange Award. View his website at www.caridostudio.com.

Invisible Venue (IV) collaborates with artists to present contemporary art in unexpected settings. IV produces artist projects, new commissions, site-specific installations and guerrilla interventions in public spaces. Online since 2005, IV originated as a web-based project to host new media online and since then has expanded to produce artist projects in a variety of contexts, including commissions presented in a 101-year-old Victorian era flat, on billboards, in the mail, on the telephone, and in an undeveloped lot, among other unlikely settings. Often shape-shifting, Invisible Venue consistently endeavors to function as a forum for exchange between artists, curators, and a wide reaching public. IV is independently produced and curated by Christian L. Frock.