money
FROM THE HISTORY OF MONEY AND FINANCE TO BLOCKCHAIN AND CRYPTO
How can we critically examine the increasing financialisation of our lives? How will this impact the way we'll live and work together in the future? How can we create better systems than the ones we've inherited?
• 5. August - 9. August 2019
• Based at ACUD in Berlin, Germany
• Special one week intensive, full-time
• Small class of participants
Pricing
Artist / Student (Full Time)*
€150
Professional*
€350
course
description
This program is about money! Whether we have it or not, money rules the world, or so it seems. In recent years, technologies like cryptocurrency, bitcoin, and blockchain have come to the fore offering alternatives to the current system but we need to know more! What’s the history of economies and money, what are the current financial systems that plague us, how does money laundering and tax evasion work, how might we create new systems and alternatives that can help bring about justice and level the playing field? This program is an attempt to create a progressive curriculum for financial literacy, for everyone!
Together we'll talk about the myths and realities of socio-cultural patterns such as barter, value exchange systems, gift economies and the peculiar relation of money & moral. We'll also trace the history of money and credit and understand their associations with societal changes while exploring different notions of value creation and value accounting in societies worldwide.
Taking the recent financial crisis 2007-2008 as a starting point for the rise of a finance-counterculture, we'll look at: Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, the notion of platform cooperativism (as opposed to platform capitalism), and the rise of horizontal
organizational structures where collective financial decision making is emerging as a new norm and the idea of re-inventing the commons as a way for creating livelihood for everybody. All in one action-packed week!
The class will include playful yet earnest experiments in financial co-creation: we will work on concepts and prototypes for basic income, token systems, and community currencies.
This class aims at providing a solid understanding of money and finance, in relation to different political and social systems. Students will learn about the emergence of markets, credit, debt, and corruption as we seek to stimulate everyone’s imagination of how a fair, inclusive economy might become a reality.
Note: We're excited to introduce a new format for our Money and Evidence programs. These are two new topics that we feel are vital for many of us, so we decided to make these programs as accessible as possible, each of them one-week long at a much lower cost. This is an experimental format for us but if all goes well we hope to repeat it and offer two one-week programs per year focused on critical tools for artists and activists.
in this course,
you will be
introduced to
General history of money and economies
Current state of worldwide financial systems
Practical knowledge of money laundering, tax evasion, debt, how people "beat" the system
Working vocabulary of finance
Blockchain and cryptocurrencies, their functions in real life and as creative practice
Finance hacking and interventions
An amazing network and community of like-minded creative beings and potential future collaborators
course outline
:See above for topics covered.
who is this
program for?
This program is for anyone interested in understanding the history of money, how it has evolved, where it is today and how we can imagine it in the future. Artists, researchers, and creative people of all kinds seeking deeper knowledge are all welcome to apply. No previous experience necessary.
meet the instructors
Ela Kagel
Digital Strategist
Digital strategist Ela Kagel specialises in the intersection of society, technology and economy. Since the 1990s she has been working as curator and program advisor for major art & tech festivals such as Transmediale, Republica, Ars Electronica, Future Everything and many more. Ela is founder of the Free Culture Incubator, and co-founded Public Art Lab Berlin and SUPERMARKT, a collaborative economy project space in Berlin. Central to Ela’s practice is working with communities all over Europe. Over the past years, she has been extensively researching and advocating for the digital commons. As part of her ongoing collaboration with the Platform coop consortium Ela is also co-hosting the Platform Coop meetups in Berlin.
Laura Ranca
Project Coordinator
Laura is a project coordinator with Tactical Tech’s Exposing the Invisible project. Before joining Tactical Tech in January 2018, she worked for two years as a program specialist with the investigative journalism portfolio of the Independent Journalism Program at Open Society Foundation in London. Prior to that, she was a reporter and researcher with the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) and with RISE Project - a community of investigative journalists, developers and activists in Romania. At RISE, among others, she coordinated the development of Visual Investigative Scenarios (VIS), a data visualization platform, which assists investigative journalists, activists and researchers in mapping complex organised crime networks. Earlier on, Laura also worked as a public information officer with the UN peacekeeping mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo and as a program coordinator and reporter with the Center for Media, Data and Society at the Central European University in Budapest, Hungary.
Paolo Cirio
Economic, and Cultural Systems
Paolo Cirio works with legal, economic, and cultural systems of the information society. He investigates social fields impacted by the Internet, such as privacy, democracy, copyright, and finance. He shows his research and intervention-based works through artifacts, photos, installations, videos, and public art. Cirio has exhibited in international museums and has won prestigious art awards. His artworks have been covered by hundreds of media outlets worldwide and he regularly gives public lectures and workshops at leading universities.
Martin Nadal
Artist
Martin Nadal (BSc) is an artist/developer based in Linz and studying the Interface Cultures program at Kunst Uni. In the past years he has collaborated in a variety of projects and taught some workshops related to art and technology. He is also interested in illustration and cinematography.
His works have been shown at Visualizar 11 (Medialab Prado), Ars Electronica,
AMRO Festival y Settimana della Scienza (Genova). IAMAS (jp).
César Escudero Andaluz
Artist
César Escudero Andaluz (Ph.D. Candidate) is an artist and researcher focused on Human-Computer Interaction, interface criticism, digital culture and its social and political effects. His work spans image-making, sculpture, videogame, installation, networked culture, IoT, robotics, media archaeology. Since 2011 he is researching at the Kunstuniversität Linz in Interface Culture LAB. His artworks have been shown in international electronic-art events, museums, galleries and conferences including ARS ELECTRONICA CENTER (at) /ZKM (de) ISMAR2015 (jp) / WRO2015 (pl) / TRANSNUMERIQUES (fr) / HANGAR.ORG (sp) / KIKK (be)/ ROME MEDIA ART FESTIVAL (it)/ ADAF (gr).
