13 Jul 2016

MoneyLab #3: Failing Better

The aim of MoneyLab is to research, map and probe (alternative) strategies of redistribution and intervention in digital economy. It starts with the conviction that after the great Bank Robbery of 2008, we can no longer only criticize financial capitalism but need to foster alternatives.

On Thursday 1 and Friday 2 December, Moneylab#3 will bring together a cacophony of artistic and economic experimentation that offer strategies for the 99%. A two-day symposium of talks, workshops, performances and parties that tackle the assumption that there is anything too big to fail.

Confirmed speakers

Tori Abernathy, Dušan Barok, Steyn Bergs, Alex Foti, Max Haiven, Lars Holdhus, Austin Houldsworth, Bindu de Knock, Simona Levi, Jeroen Van Loon, Silvio Lorusso, Renzo Martens, Dan Mihaltianu, Emily Rosamond, Trebor Scholz, Brett Scott, Cassie Thornton & Henry Warwick.

Background

After Bitcoin forked, and remains in tatters, it is now blockchain technology that ignites visions of de-regulated and decentralized organization, while it is simultaneously being sanitized by commercial banks. Meanwhile the sharing and 'service' economy lost its innocuous veneer and streaming services have failed and continue to fold the music industry. Despite the mutation of crowdfunding into crowd-equity and platform co-operatives, artists and designers continue to struggle to financially support themselves. All the while the financial mediators of the previous centuries continue to drag themselves onward into global debt.

We are failing better, nonetheless. Workers' unions are on the rise and numerous collectives are working together to collectively insure their own wellbeing and build alternative models of social governance. The aspirations of grassroots organizations such as Diem25, that promise to liberate social democracy from the stronghold of global finance, are gaining momentum across Europe. People's parties such as Podemos and 15M even neared an electoral majority. This momentum has thrust radical economic alternatives into the central stage and some governments in Europe have begun experimenting with progressive policies such as a living working wage and a universal basic income.

Moneylab#3 will assess the ambition of financial provocations that have ignited and dispersed from grass-roots movements to people's political parties to establish a terrain of social and political reform, from de-centralized networks to state governments. The rift we find ourselves in stems much further than 'the banks.' Moneylab#3 will examine how financial retaliation has led to political reformation and asks whether the ambitious advancements in finance and governance can be considered attempts to fail better.

Partners

Baltan Laboraties, Feminist Economics Department, Fine Art Financ€ Lab, Futherfield Gallery, PublishingLab & University of the Phoenix.

Practical information networkcultures.org/moneylab
Tickets: € 30 per day incl. lunch / € 60 passe-partout incl. lunch / Students 50% discount, incl lunch

Tickets: www.eventbrite.nl/e/moneylab-3-failing-better-tickets-24617026188
Tickets for individual panels will be sold separately from September.

MoneyLab is an initiative of the Institute of Network Cultures, Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences, CREATE-IT, Amsterdam Center of Expertise, and the Amsterdam Creative Industries Network.