about

The history of pawn broking can be traced through the last 3000 years, to ancient China and later around the world, where it is known to have been organized as small businesses - pawn shops, in ancient Greek and Roman cultures. It is a practise that has laid the foundations for- and evolved into the loaning systems of today. Traditionally, a pawn broker has been granting loans to people on the basis of a deposited object that was kept as pawn, and estimated by it’s monetary value which determined the size of the loan. If the loan was not repaid, the pawn broker would have the option of keeping the object instead. With some variations, that is still the way pawn broking is practiced today..

The Pawn Broker
is investigating the relations between things and people, working with the concept of pawn broking through certain ideas:

Value of affection
Affection is a feeling that connects you to your surroundings. To feel affection for a thing can be as strong a feeling as to anything else. It is not always clear why you feel affection for a certain thing. It is something subjective, a matter between the thing and you. We believe in the value of affection - for things and other things.

Backing up your backup
Sadly, things can break and things can get lost. To keep them safe you need to back them up. But how can you trust that the backup is safe? - By backing it up! Backing up in multiple dimensions and places ensures that they exist somewhere in some form even in the distant future. We aim to make things available, retrievable, forever.

Vehicles for traveling through time
Are you also dreaming about the possibility of time travel, or are you reading this while having already completed a voyage either backwards or forwards? The Pawn Broker proposes things as possible vehicles for traveling through time. Anything deposited with us will be kept through time, meaning that they can appear at any point in the future to come. You - in the future will have access to the exact thing, that has traveled forward in time, while you are moving backwards by meeting it.

Cloning authenticity
Some things are made of peculiar shapes, imperfections, signs of time and wear. All these details are perhaps what makes the thing so special to you. The things are like living organisms, that is why we like to use the term “cloning” for our approach to reproducing them. We do not simply reproduce the surface material aspect of the things, we incorporate the underlying and inherent aspects of them, their DNA …

Pawn
Our concept of pawn is based on that of a mutual commitment. The pawn ties us together as a mediator, a thing between us. By depositing something with us, we commit to reassuring it and you commit the thing to be a part of The Pawn Broker community.

A community of things - for things
The community for things is made out of all the different deposited things and their stories. It is a realm of objects where the personal becomes shared, and the things themselves are liberated to create new bonds. It is a community connecting people with things, people with people, and things with things.