· Research
Gifts, Shiny Trinkets, and having fun when it feels wrong to have fun
Dispatch #5 | April 10, 2025 | Luisa Ji
The trinket economy is based on small, often inexpensive, objects that are also oftentimes mass-produced and consumed. These mass-produced objects shouldn’t exist as they are cheaply made and disposable. They hold little meaning as a standalone. However, through acquiring these items, trinkets tend to become vessels of memories—souvenirs, a little stuffy from the claw machine, or a pack of parody trading cards you spend real money on as a joke. Having recently sunk $40 (collectively, among friends) into a claw machine, I, too, question if that one plushy was worth the price. It was nonetheless, fun and a temporary redirection of other burdens in life—like blind boxes, going to a new city, trying a new dish… Sending friends reels and memes around is likened to passing trinkets and small gifts, but it keeps us on platforms that we are all thinking of leaving (but cannot, for reasons of friendships on the internet). These small acts of gifting, especially in things with little monetary value, present themselves as a less burdensome way of keeping relationships alive.
Gifts, in a broader sense, have become very pragmatic. Even in the language of funding in the cultural sector, funding opportunities with many strings attached have often been phrased as gifts and generous support. Artists engage in constant self-censorship to be able to continue receiving gifts of substantial amounts to continue producing. Non-institutionally funded artists directly receive support from their fans, who purchase their art (often mediated by another organizational or corporate entity), and are also subjected to this pressure. Boygenius responded to fans wanting them to perform in fan-friendly ways with Bite the Hand, repeating "I can't love you how you want me to." Rather than sitting with art and other beautiful moments afforded in art, consumption-centred interactions between artists and their audiences incentivize the demand “I’m paying you; therefore, you should serve me how I want you to serve me.” Cultural production beholden to those who put money into it is inherently transactional and no longer relational.
The artists and researchers of Goblin Market spent the past two months together to discover things about each other’s practice, ourselves in a changed world, and how not to be too hung up about defining what art is. We gathered around the fact that advocating for our art is a part of the craft and creating different stories that describe the same set of ideas. We found ways to bring into reality what beauty might look like and present it in a way that people can stumble upon on a walk in the park with enough curiosity and courage. We were fascinated by the dissonance between being bombarded with one bad news after another and living life as if nothing was wrong. Admitting the fear we have and making a drastic change, of course, in our path toward the future is scary—the future we know is better than the one that we don’t. It’s like going on a road trip in 2025 with a gas station map from 1999. The terrain has shifted significantly, and the shift has only been accelerating. Even during the development of this project, every day, we are monitoring how artists’ mobility and expressions will be impacted by shifting political landscapes. There’s no map for us, but we have stories from people who lived through (perhaps worse) iterations of the same horrors to make sense of how to chart this familiar yet uncertain terrain.
The first Goblin Market became a place where we could experience an enchanted world when the emergence of the projects came from a less desirable reality. As I mentioned, many artists found themselves in precarious circumstances, yet chose to show up. We spoke about the fundamental rewiring of how we see ourselves in our art when we directly interact with the audience. The audience of Goblin Market is a generous bunch, and many offer payment, trinkets, a good story, or a joke.
Dinner parties end. You plan another one and another one. The next iteration in Montreal will mark a departure from the prototyping process, but it will take on a life of its own. Goblin Market, as a means of gathering and artistic release, is set to have an end for each iteration. But this is also cyclical, as artists go back to their lives and take part in this experience with them. Collaboration requires being genuine and honest, which is rare in a competitive space that hinges on people wearing a mask and undercutting each other all the time. If you know that the end is imminent, would you still give your full commitment to what’s left of the time you have?
And if so, what is your commitment? Is your commitment larger than the size of your ego? Does your commitment to your art persist when you eat breakfast or get groceries?
Do you move through this world as an artist, or do you pretend? A growing number of professionalized artists and highly educated arts professionals tend not to know how to intervene in spaces not designated to them with clear instructions. Of course, there are rules to follow so we don’t have to deal with repercussions for reasons inconsistent with the purpose. This is alarming. The arts and cultural sector is saturated with the inability to acknowledge that experiments are hypotheses—there’s a chance that hypotheses could be wrong. Moving towards a different future requires experiments, trials, and errors to negotiate our ways when there are seemingly no options. Negotiating these options requires being relentless, often looking like a fool, and being full long cringe. I come from a culture where if you don’t bargain (more so performatively, as a gesture nowadays under globalization), there’s something wrong with you. Most of the time, you negotiate a discount; other times, you walk away with a handful of samples: decanted perfumes, hand cream, hand warmers, keychains—trinkets with little monetary value but make you feel good. It's not read as greed when this interaction is expected, almost a ritual embedded in shopping. The lack of negotiation in Western societies yields the disappearance of nuances—listing rights to different arbitrary "property ownerships," threatening with retaliations, and pointing forks and knives against each other are much more common. Artistic works similarly become forts when the social norms they emerge from are hostile as such. Inside these forts are the artists and their contemplative art, hoping to be discovered by collectors seeking the thrill of novelty.
The wealth discrepancy between classes is growing rapidly as the rich gobble up property and infrastructure at their lowest prices when nobody else is in a position to do so. The internet increasingly points its spears towards the ultra-rich nepobabies in the creative fields. While at a glance, we see it as “art can only be afforded by rich people,” but in actuality, our discontents are directed to the fact that the creative pursuits of the rich don’t at all reflect the world we live in. Indeed, we can only look outward from the perspective of our bodies, however, we see another money-making scheme, and we know that the young, ultra-rich nepobabies and the celebrity fashion trends they endorse are just another way of force-feeding “good taste” to those who desire so much to be able to afford it (or get into hefty credit card debts to “afford” it). Engaging in the arts and the production of culture is a helpful tool to continue raking in money through a narrative of “I can have it, but all you can do is watch me live a lavish lifestyle you can never have.” Wealth begets more wealth. Images of wealth beget more wealth. We end up with an internet of “eat the rich” content while simultaneously praising the gorgeous gowns worn by the latest darlings of billion-dollar fashion brands. Even good taste is just another useful tool to manipulate what is the next big pop culture moment. At least nepotism is an honest response to how our culture eats its young and deprives them of their futures.
When learning a new tool or a craft, people start with wanting to make a commonly agreed upon useful thing: a bowl, a tray, a pipe, a website, a portrait of a person, etc. When that’s not within reach fast enough, the act of making something becomes meaningless. People give up or find other substitutes for the missing steps. Similarly, with the act of “getting to a better future.” We have an idea of what that future should look like based on what other people have lived or, as told by experts, painting a picture for us, but the future can’t be reached fast enough while the present moment is uncertain and transient. Practicing an art or a craft can be a gruesome journey that is “no pain, no gain,” but there are other ways to spend time on this journey towards making more beautiful things than sheer willpower. Goblin Market, first and foremost, asks the question of whether there is a way for artists to fill their cups, feed themselves, and create a context to feel safe when experimenting with ideas that have not yet materialized. We often think about the end product as something that can be released into the world, the album, the show, the artifact, the exhibit, the painting, even though every step of the way, we generate something valuable, perhaps not to be defined by monetary value just yet.
Goblin Market is a market for works in progress, shapeshifting, trying to discover their worth in a world where they are indeed one of a kind. We asked the participants to trade with the goblins something precious while not closing off the possibility of monetary exchange. It is an exercise of rediscovering small acts of alternative values that can be leveraged where perhaps other means of exchange are better suited than transactional ones: a joke, an avocado stuffy, a stray earring that somehow found its other non-matching half, or being committed to the joke a little too far. Trinket exchange is a holder or a vessel of relationality and shared memories; it is a practice of generosity, of being accustomed to giving and receiving with integrity rather than feeling superior or inferior. It is a reminder that other things in life are equally, if not more, precious than money. However, artists must also recognize that money enables creative autonomy that romanticizing barter and scavenging cannot. Trinkets and money hold different things. Being able to make propositions, negotiate, and decide how you receive or flow through resources to others requires exercises and practice in one’s intuition, not perpetuated by empty desires to fit in nor appear “useful” to others.
Shortly after the Toronto Goblin Market, I made my way to Montreal for the ArtIA Symposium at Société des arts technologiques (SAT). Discussing AI and its place in the world has been strange and contentious. It has made creating conventionally valuable things easier and previously highly marketable skills replaceable, but crafting genuinely peculiar and surreal experiences under AI’s proliferation has become increasingly complex. Yes, there are unsettling and even, at glance, enchanting imageries from its process, but they are one-offs, blips, with no beginnings and no ends, no place and no worlds, no contexts and no commitments. We settle for what is good enough—but they are more than good enough for a throwaway pitch deck or an Instagram ad. We settle for the lowest-hanging fruit. Everyone wants to pick the low-hanging fruit, and in many ways, everyone has easy access to it. Generating an idea or an image with AI is similar. It doesn’t offer anything new if the person providing the prompt doesn’t present it with something interesting to begin with. It seems we have often replaced thinking with tools that embody a specific action sequence already. Gadgets are an example; they perform a very specific task incredibly well but have no other use—an egg peeler, a pineapple core shucker, grape scissors and so on. Every conversation in the prompt window of ChatGPT becomes a specialized gadget when all that is asked of AI is to replicate, repeat, and reproduce. But like everything in our current world, the stories we tell about AI can be turned entirely different just as easily. Plastic is good because it persists, but it is also bad for the same reason. We choose the easy way—single-use, disposable—its value vanishes the minute it is used. There are a massive number of YouTube videos teaching you how to use ChatGPT to automate conversion or email communications. They are things to be thrown away. They stay around in an entirely despicable way in someone’s spam folder, like plastic wraps in a landfill. What a waste of something so precious—a crystallization of the labour, the craft, the work, the energy put into making a mimicry of our human intelligence possible. To say that AI doesn’t need to exist is to say that everything else in modernity that we constantly reap the benefits of shouldn’t exist. Perhaps that statement is true, but they do exist, and we don’t appreciate their existence enough to give them a home in this world. AI and plastic exist as functional means to an end, but never as a thing that is honoured as itself. They can be moulded and shaped into things that they are not—this is the extent of the stories we have for them. Before AI came to take our creative jobs, creative jobs were already moulded as disposable skill sets. Schools and industries condition artists, designers, and others in the profession to race each other with how well they can replicate the aesthetics of the latest trend, only to find themselves fired up, burnt out, washed up, and somehow wake up in another rat race once again.
Between seeing AI as a liberating tool for creativity and people losing their jobs to the ever more powerful AI in the workforce, one thing for sure is that the ability to do things faster doesn’t help us gain more free time beyond the initial illusion of being able to do things faster. This illusion thrives on secrecy and getting the new and better tools before everyone else. When generative AI such as ChatGPT can be used for free or with a small monthly subscription, people catch up to the efficiency, and we return to trying to outrun each other again by seeking a newer, better, more efficient tool.
The desire to sabotage the hamster wheel grows, but where do we turn once we get off the hamster wheel and are left with no place to keep churning?
In Murano, glassmakers used to be forbidden from leaving the island as an effort to gatekeep their recipes and techniques for clear glistening glass. Imagine your expertise binding you to a place you could never leave. Some escaped from the island of Murano, but most stayed to continue working despite being discontent with the rules. For the hyperprofessionalized artists today, this binding is no longer a physical place but a deep sense of achievement and simultaneous helplessness that comes with being pigeonholed into one perfect niche that fits precisely “you” and the brand constructed around “you.” Getting out of this perfect niche means navigating a world you wouldn’t have to navigate had you stayed in the niche. Staying put and continuing feels like a reasonable low-hanging fruit and produces little risk that you have to take accountability for the actions and consequences personally.
We hesitate to make decisions because we want them to be the best decisions we can make. We ruminate, one foot in the past and the other hovering above all the opportunities and possibilities. The future isn’t perfect, so we spend more time worrying about whether or not to take the next step than actually taking the next step.
We also lack the options to pursue different paths. This is not just in the arts but also in various facets of our lives. We know that a place is designated for one function, one use. A room is a container, and its contents remain undefined unless inhabited. Goblins and their lived-in worlds are spatial practices more than artistic expressions. At the Toronto iteration of Goblin Market, each merchant booth provides a unique story and a world of its own. With every corner turned, there’s a new way of seeing the world and its relationship to material, artifacts, and value. Goblin Market is a cacophonious whole that occupies a room, a container, and spatially reconfigures it through stories. Under the broader contexts where everything emerges from a master plan, a cohesive brand, and an ultra-curated public appearance that can’t stand any room for oddity, the intentionally messy world is an interesting take on the arbitrary rules we find ourselves abiding by on autopilot.The economics of putting together an arts event makes no sense as a standalone. Opportunities in high-end galleries are heavily gatekept. Private venues have a hefty cost and focus on making money from the action, which often means the cost is directly transferred to the audience. It’s pay-to-play. Transactions are unavoidable. However, there are ways to make it beautiful.
In Eastern cultures, transactions are usually concealed and ritualized, especially in aesthetic experiences—meticulous packaging, performance, and gatherings. People pay in monetary terms, but often in proxy or inconspicuously to not interfere with the aesthetic quality of the exchange, especially when the exchange, in its nature, stems from deeper appreciation. Art becomes an everyday encounter through small rituals like putting money into a beautifully designed envelope before you hand it to another person, meticulously arranging breakfast with a glistening egg yolk atop freshly steamed rice, and always, I mean, always showing up to a dinner party with a heartfelt and perhaps silly gift for the host.
Many people showed up at Goblin Market with their art, trinkets, and precious stories. Thresholds are critical because that's how you enter and exit worlds that are not yours. People enter the worlds created by artists and the practices shaping their works, bringing gifts rather than feeling burdened by the expectation to buy tickets or adhere to a specific dress code. I hope goblins as a practice persist and continue to reconfigure behaviours that encourage generosity—an act of true courage when everything feels like a mess, and all you want to do is curl up in a blanket and eat ice cream straight from the tub.