Now, Joy Kogawa is an artist, and those performing here tonight are artists, and you may wonder what an artist is doing getting involved in a project that has to do with the structure of money. Money as such is, as Oscar Wilde said, perfectly useless. You can't eat it, drink it, shelter yourself from the cold with it, wear it, or make love with it unless deeply disturbed. In and of itself, it has no emotions, no mind, and no conscience. It doesn't put out flowers or have children, and it makes a lousy pet.
People do that, using money as a symbolic token.
We've also been told all of this is controlled by a mysterious god called Global Market Forces, who is now beyond our control, but to whom we are forced to sacrifice our children. Thus if international commercial interests suck up our wealth, stomp out our magazines, trash our culture, and dictate what toxic chemicals we must eat and drink and breathe, it is the will of Global Market Forces, whose ways are dark, but who is thought to have our best interests at heart in the end. Now, the Toronto Dollar Project is an exercise in changing the symbolic structure of money. This project believes that there can be a different kind of money, and that its circulation can directly enhance the community through which it circulates. But with the Toronto Dollar, you do know where it's been.