Zachary Smith

One Favor 2022

The One Favor project is an ongoing exploration of alternative currencies, mutual aid, and community development. Ceramic tokens were minted, each worth one favor from me. Each favor can take the form of any act of labor, so long as it follows 3 rules. A favor must be legal. A favor can only be labor. A favor can be no more than 8 hours of work. Favor recipients are encouraged to think of services that they haven't had time to do, or have seemed daunting to tackle alone. Favors don’t have to be big projects, nor is there anything too small. The point of this project is to practice bringing people in to help with your life. One Favor began as a response to the 2020 Covid-19 pandemic. During that time, community was difficult for me to develop. Normal social methods for making friends, meeting new people, they were no longer safe nor ethical. So I endeavored to make a new method for developing new connections. That is the central focus of One Favor, the development of community. One Favor has been going on for 2 years as of writing this. I’ve made 465 tokens, distributed 153, and done 74 favors over that term. Favors have been simple and quick to more complex and drawn out. The first series in 2021 had a time limit, as I wasn’t sure how this project would go, and I didn’t want to overextend myself. As such, the tokens made in 2021 were only good for the 2021 calendar year. For 2022, I made 365 tokens, one for each day in a year. This is to represent a full year of work, one year of my life, that I’m potentially putting up for people to make use of. Average life expectancy for someone like me is about 80. The 2022 rendition of One Favor accounts for 1.25% of what I might reasonably expect to be my life. The entire token/currency thing is meant to put a magnifying glass on what I spend my days doing, and the effects my actions have on others. The hope is that by making explicit the often unspoken communal transactions people have with each other, it can highlight both how easily someone can help and be helped.

For more information, and the blog documenting each favor, please visit my website: www.omegastuff.com/onefavor

@omegastuff