#exstrange was a live exhibition project that used the online marketplace eBay as a site of curatorial operation, artistic production and cultural exchange; a project that operated within the geographical boundaries enabled by the commercial platform the curators, Marialaura Ghidini and Rebekah Modrak, appropriated—the various ‘national’ eBay sites.
The exhibition presented a series of artworks-as-auctions that artists and designers created for eBay by using the entire listing as material constituting the artwork—descriptive text, images, pricing, and categories. The categories (such as Business & Industry, Collectibles, Consumer Electronics, Health & Beauty, Real Estate, and Warranty Services) also became a tool to reach particular and diverse communities of interest beyond physical and socio-cultural barriers. Live for 7 days only, each auction was launched and maintained by its creator so that the interactions with the bidders (viewers) and their comments were incorporated in real time into the work on eBay. In this sense, an #exstrange artwork would not exist before being an auction and would only be complete within the context of eBay.