Truc Troc: the credit crunch art fair

Truc Troc is an art fair with a difference. Works are traded and deals are brokered but no money is allowed to change hands. Instead punters are packing a pad of Post It notes on which they write offers. In French truc means ‘something’ and troc means ‘to exchange’.

So the truc could be a week in a ski chalet, the artist’s weight in Belgian chocolate, guitar lessons, a vinyl record... I even saw sexual favours being offered.

I’ve covered big art fairs in London, and they don’t come much bigger than Frieze. I covered it last year with superstar Spanish journalist, Cristina Martinez (see - you can read about it here). It’s hectic and all of modern art’s enfants terribles are present, posing and pompous. At Frieze deals are done in back rooms over vintage champagne and for prices that make Fernando Torres look like good value for money.

In stark contrast, Truc Troc is transparent. You can see what the competition has bid because the Post It notes are stuck to the wall next to the artwork. Naturally, the most popular pieces are well and truly plastered by the end of the weekend and the artist has some hard decisions to take.

I was covering Truc Troc for AP and I’d put together quite a beefy rig to capture the event. My 5D was barely recognisable by the time I’d added a cage, a follow focus, extended pan handle, rails, shoulder rig, magnifying viewfinder and matte-box. I decided to shoot most of the event on my vintage Carl Zeiss 35mm Flektogon. It can macro-focus closer than 20cm and on a full-frame camera offers a decent wide-angle for larger artworks without having to film from the far side of the gallery.

My 5D is transformed with a full cine-rig

Over 20,000 people attended the show throughout the weekend so getting a clean shot was never easy. On Friday night the queue snaked out of the doors of the Bozar gallery and half way down Rue Ravenstein. Fortunately I wasn’t queuing. I met up with my contact Leopoldo from Truc Troc who gave me a guided tour of the exhibition and later an interview. Leopoldo explained how Truc Troc is a credit-crunch success; as the economic situation worsens, the more popular the fair becomes. From what I saw I’m inclined to agree.

Leopoldo reckons Truc Troc is an art fair for an economic downturn

This pair of performance artists were painting one another in foul, fish-smelling PVC glue. Afterwards, they crudely stuck the sweepings of a barbershop floor to their bodies. Before long they both looked Neanderthal and with their vile and viscid suits of human hair complete, the pair wandered around Truc Troc looking confused and causing no end of consternation to new arrivals. 

Monkeying around is thirsty work

The PVC glue they used stank like Billingsgate Market

Denis Meyers painting a new work live at Truc Troc

Irving Garp was probably not looking for a billion
 dollar credit default swap negotiation 

I conducted my first interview in the French at Truc Troc. The intensive language courses are paying off. I was talking to Denis Meyers, a French artist who was painting a street-art mural live at Truc Troc. It’s not always easy discussing conceptual art in your mother tongue but in a second language it’s particularly tough. Fortunately Denis was sympathetic and gave clear, concise answers. 

Irving Garp is a photographer who had taken a series of hair-dryer inspired shots. For example, a blonde woman with a hair-dryer to her head like Russian roulette. The implication was she had nothing between her ears (because she was blonde). Apparently the model is actually a surgeon, Irving explained.

My favourite piece was a triptych of hell that reminded me of the enormous Last Judgement fresco in Albi cathedral. The 100 richest people in the world are riding a golden roller coaster crowned with the charging bull of Wall Street. They loop the loop over rivers of human blood and waiting in the wings are the naked, rotting proles - they’re too busy devouring one another’s flesh to notice what a hoot the roller coaster looks. Bill Gates looks like he might have wet his pants, a guilty Mona Lisa smile creeps across his face. The artist is called Lucas Racasse. He is the protoge of Belgian artist Guy Peellaert best known for designing the cover to David Bowie’s Diamond Dogs album.

The roller coaster of Hell and Bill Gates bags the best seat

I learned the word pied de nez from Lucas. I'm not sure how
you'd translate it into English, so here's a screen-grab of him performing a pied de nez 

Also at Truc Troc I saw a man picking through the contents of vacuum cleaner bags with a pair of tweezers. He was neatly arranging the contents into little piles, paper clips, rubber bands, cigarette butts. It brought on my allergies even thinking about all that dust. 

The first time Hannah used a Dyson she didn't realise there was an "instant empty" button which spewed the dusty guts of the vacuum cleaner like fluffy, grey cat vomit... this is what our kitchen floor looked like that day

I also really liked these portraits of an African by Italian artist Alfredo Longo. They're painstakingly created from thousands of crushed Diet and Caffeine-free Coke cans.

A sweet tooth is needed for this art

Take a step back and the crushed cans become a face

In a dark room tucked away from the main gallery a young, female artist was sticking pins into a girl’s thigh. Around these grisly anchor points she was threading a lace stocking. To be honest, it all felt a bit creepy filming a girl in a thong with a night-vision camera.




In the last year I’ve covered some amazing exhibitions (including David Hockey, Frieze, the Pre-Raphaelites, Kinetica and Super Human at the Wellcome Collection) but I think for variety and innovation I enjoyed Truc Troc the most.

The final HD rendering of my piece nearly killed my poor computer so I treated it to another 4gb of RAM and opened up the case to let it breathe more easily. My new i7 arrives on Friday and I thought it was going to be like one of the American cop movies where the retiring officer bites it on his last day of service.