"I can pay for it myself."

Yesterday I conducted another social experiment at Ambrosia Cafe. This time rather than buying coffee in advance and waiting for a response, I decided to confront people face-to-face in hopes to gain more insight into individual responses to the project.

After customers placed their orders with the barista I approached them and asked if they would be willing to let me buy their coffee for them. Most people took this as a come on and held up their money suggesting they could afford to pay for it themselves and others avoided my eyes completely. About half of the people I talked to wanted to know why I wanted to buy them a cup of coffee, including the first man I talked to, who still refused the cup once I explained it was a social experiment/art project.

Lewis Hyde discusses the erotic nature of gift-giving in his landmark book, The Gift, which was something that I witnessed first-hand. Although two people did accept my offer to buy their drinks (see the receipts above) most people avoided any potential obligations that might come with this gift by declining.

Most of the time, we choose to use our consumer power to remain separate and unattached from the people around us, owing them nothing but the cash in our wallets. They sell their labor while we use a symbol of our own abstracted labor in exchange for consumer products. This abstraction separates us from the person on the other side of the transaction. Much of the push behind the movement to "Buy Local" combats this estrangement from the humanity of our economy.

After the first three customers I approached refused my offers I began to feel extremely sad, disappointed, and a bit hopeless at the rejection of my potential gifts. The second woman who agreed to let me buy her coffee, Kristin, mirrored these feelings in her explanation for accepting my offer. She said that she noticed the negative effect it had on her friends when she turned down their generosity and was making a conscious effort to be open to such opportunities. Her attempt to be more receptive was a foil for my attempt to be generous.

In developing the next iteration of this project I intend to focus on two questions:
How can gift debt be put to use in a positive way?
-and-
How can the feelings I experience while conducting the experiment drive the direction of this project?