In my family we often have difficutly expressing our love for one another and often the forms of expression we choose are misinterpreted or not received at all.

I wanted to create a system for recognizing and valueing the emotional exchanges within my family. I chose to use Canadian currency because it is a model of value and exchange that people are already familiar with; as well, I was interested to see whether money used as a medium of emotional exchange could be invested with enough emotional worth that it would be too valuable to be exchanged as money again.

I took 13 Canadian 5 dollar bills and typed instructions for its exchange as emotional currency on each:

Dear Family,
This bill can no longer be exchanged in the market; it is now EMOTIONAL CURRENCY. It can be exchanged with other members of our "family" as an emotional gesture. Something must be added to the bill with every exchange. Emotional Currency must never be hoarded, as it only has value when it is given away.[...]

When my family (and chosen family) had circulated the bills for a period of 3 months, I collected them back for exhibition. I analyzed the physical traces of exchange and emotional investment and wrote a text that speculated on the sorts of relationships and emotional exchanges that each family member values (ie. thought was worthy of recognizing with the exchange of the emotional currency bill.)

After the exhibition, I returned the bills to my family and friends. Some are still in circulation; some have become artifacts and have been taken out of circulation altogether; none have re-entered the flow of the monetary economy. I take this as proof that these bills have a personal and emotional value that exceeds their value in the market exchange system.