Tadej Pogačar

Street Economy Archive
2005, 11 c-prints, 100 x 70 cm

Tadej Pogačar most recent projects involve research, urban interventions and collaboration with social minorities. He explores different systems of self organisations within urban contexts establishing supraregional reference systems.

In his work “Street Economy Archive” Tadej Pogačar deals with street trading, the most conspicuous form of informal economy, that is under constant supervision and subject to many restrictions. It became successful by combining a wide variety of economic models and sales strategies, and survives through its adaptability, mobility and improvisational skills.

Selforganized forms of trade arise mostly from states of emergency and street trading reflects these social-political developments and conditions. Street trading can visualize real life conditions of minorities, using public space participatorically and offering survival possibilities as a place of exchange. Street trading is one of the few opportunities where minorities appear in the public, having the possibilitiy to participate in public life.

Street Economy Archive (2001 – 2008) researches and documents various kinds of informal economy in different countries and cities. In the mid-’80s, when Mexico was going through a severe economic crisis, street trading took over the function of official trading to provide all the basic services for the city. Until 1992, some 200,000 vendors all over the city sold everything imaginable, from fresh vegetables or tacos to television sets. Autonomous distribution systems were organised and then dissolved. Informal market sectors are tolerated for as long as they bring advantages for the regular market, solving its problems or offering innovative ideas.