Src: East Carolina University

Handmeon is not an entirely new idea. The concepts behind it, it turns out, have been around for centuries. One of our main inspirations comes from the tradition of Kula, practiced by the island peoples of the Massim archipelago in the South Pacific, and documented by Bronislaw Malinowski in his book Argonauts of the Western Pacific. In Kula, participants travel up to hundreds of miles by canoe in order to exchange valuables such as shell necklaces and armbands. Kula articles never remain long with one recipient; rather they move from one hand to the next throughout a vast network of islands. The tradition serves to build and strengthen relationships between tribe members.

We found this attitude towards gifts to be refreshing. Ours is a society where giving seems to have been largely co-opted by commercial interests and turned into an act of shopping and consumption. Who was it, exactly, who decided that gifts start with person A and end with person B? Why shouldn’t person C, D, and so on enjoy the gift as well? How was it that re-gifting got a bad rap? Why is accumulation such a worthwhile thing to do?

Handmeon, like Kula, puts the emphasis on the experiences we have with gifts and the stories that are passed along with them. Kula valuables are not just shells; they’ve become something greater by virtue of their journey and the people with whom they’ve sojourned. Some of them have names and dates carved on them which are hundreds of years old. Like Kula, Handmeon objects are passed from hand to hand (or by post if you must). The canoe is optional.

Unlike Kula, which relies on the oral tradition to recount history, Handmeon borrows from the blogging world, letting you tell stories in words, pictures, audio, or video. While Kula valuables circumnavigate the Massim archipelago in prescribed clockwise or counter-clockwise fashion, Handmeon articles are free to travel throughout the world. The site keeps track of where, when, and with whom a gift has sojourned, with the help of Google maps. The result is an online history of the gift’s relationship to the community, a sort of digital provenance.

In Kula, only two type of things are used as gifts. Soulava (shell necklaces) travel in a clockwise direction around the archipelago, while mwali (shell armbands) travel counter-clockwise. Here again, Handmeon is less constrained; examples are quite diverse. Brass Flamingo started its journey in Vermont and now resides in Texas. It’s a metaphor for unchecked human desire, with posts that explore the possibilities of post-consumer consciousness. Other examples include an Ovation guitar, several pieces of artwork, a stuffed Doberman that raps Jingle Bells, a rock from Mt. Washington, and a votive candle from the Watergate complex. A Handmeon gift can be anything you can attach an ID sticker to, but it’s best for beautiful, peculiar, or one-of-a-kind cultural artifacts—in other words, something that can carry a story.