Who participates in the construction of heritage value? Who quantifies it? How is this value exchanged, negotiated or traded? As an answer to these questions (and to instigate others at the same time), VAlUE! Patrimonial Auction was an exercise to ponder the economic value of that which has no value: dust or plaster molds with the shape of the theater’s slope of the former Teatro Italia in Santiago, where the original intervention took place.

With strings and nails, the theater’s slope was transformed into a sort of pre-archaeological site with a grid of 700 squares (the number of seats in the old theater), each being understood as a ‘lot,’ following the real estate custom of subdividing land to speculate with its value.

Then, for a month, we exhumed the dust adhered to the slope to deposit the contents in envelopes that were weighed, signed and identified with their coordinates.

In order to ensure exclusiveness, with a brush, we applied thin layers of liquid latex to 15 of the 700 lots until a 0.5 cm thick membrane was obtained. Once dried, we carefully removed it to use it as a formwork inside 5-cm-deep cardboard boxes; then we poured plaster and created replicas of each lot.

Both the dust bags and the plaster molds were publicly auctioned on July 5, 2015, at 7:00 p.m., on the same site of the former Teatro Italia. The auction was directed by Pabla Ugarte, renowned auctioneer from Christie’s, and had 56 attendees who auctioned 30 of the 700 samples or exhumed lots, paying values ranging from Usd$ 8 to 80 for pieces which, in practical terms, have no value.