AXM-E3007 - Strange Economics, Lecture, 26.10.2022-30.11.2022
This course space end date is set to 30.11.2022 Search Courses: AXM-E3007
Topic outline
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AXM-E3007 - Strange Economics, 26.10.2022-30.11.2022
Course Assignments:
Assigned Roles: Creative Registrars > Sum up highlights of entire course during the last session in their own words, with their own POV, in any format they wish. four volunteers to do this.
General Assignment: Vocabulary List > work in ensembles of 2-3 or individually (alone) - if you feel uncomfortable working in ensembles - to develop one novel creative terminology that opens up a creative outlook capable of bridging your thinking, speculation, and artistic/creative practices with the terminologies and discourses of economics that we have touched upon during the course. Try to explain the term using the resources provided by the course or further readings and/or materials. Don’t assume you need to be an expert in economics, this is a freethought experiment that encourages thinking past academic expectations and definitions. To get started on ‘thinking economics and art together’ is the main point of this exercise. For example, today we will encounter some constructive terminologies that attempt to describe a condition or a practice that interfaces art and economics. This is your independent work quota, during the final session you can use any format (performance/PowerPoint/object/drawings/short video etc.) to present your constructed novel creative terminology in a 5 min. (minimum) to 10 min. (maximum) span.
Course Schedule and Session DetailsWednesday 26 October: 9:15 – 12:00
Introduction: Financialization and Economic Activism at the Edge of Art
9:15 – 11:00 (with 10 min. break halfway through)
The first two sessions of this course are connected and are meant to provide a general yet partial overview of the different strands of practice and thinking that have emerged within the expanded field of art in response to the intensification of financialization on the one hand, and the ascendancy of an “algorithmic realism” related to the digital transformation of the planet on the other. Financialization most generally refers to the increase in size and impact of the financial sector and its financial instruments relative to the overall economy. Creative practices that are impelled to engage with these realities are reframing the terms and characteristics of activism as previously understood within an arts framework. Within a landscape of conditions that has narrowed the possibilities for, and the impact of, transgression, refusal, and strike - all traditional agencies associated with art – terms such as leveraging, and counter-speculation have emerged as the new signifiers for a continued challenge to the closure of alternative narratives. The first session maps out some key terms and ideas through a lecture featuring some examples, while the second will be an in-depth focus on alternative economic narratives in the work of a number of artists and will feature some short screenings.
11.15 – 11.20
On the google document linked below, without necessarily mentioning your name, please take 5 minutes to do the following:
A- In a sentence or two at the most, try to explain – in your own words - the main point you are taking away from today’s presentation.
B- Write down one question you have or issue you wish to be further explained.
Please use separators (for example dotted lines) or different colours to make each individual note distinct.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1x_FDDxSnsHG0QTejmZA6ig9k-ENypsh-CxWIuaugIHQ/edit?usp=sharing
11:20 – 12.00
Responding to your notes + describing the main course assignment
>> READING FOR SESSION 1, 26 OCTOBER<<
ESSENTIAL READING = PLEASE READ BEFORE CLASS
FURTHER READING = TEXTS/BOOKS USED DURING LECTURES IN CLASS
ALL READING FOR THE 26 OCTOBER SESSION CAN BE DOWNLOADED HERE: https://mycourses.aalto.fi/mod/folder/view.php?id=962341
ESSENTIAL READING:
- Max Haiven (2018) Participatory art within, against and beyond financialization: benign pessimism, tactical parasitics and the encrypted common, Cultural Studies, 32:4, 530-559, DOI: 10.1080/09502386.2017.1363260
FURTHER READING:
- Ivan Ascher et al. (2022). Finance and the Financialization of Capitalism
- Other books and essays that are relevant for those interested in a deep reading include the books: Ivan Ascher – Portfolio Society (2016), Michel Feher – Rated Agency (2018), and essays by Emily Rosamond, Martijn Konings, and Adkins, Cooper & Konings.
Wednesday 2 November
Alternative Economic Narratives: Unsettling the Common Imaginary of Art and Economics
Featuring guest speaker and interlocutor: Bahar Noorizadeh
ZOOM LINK:
https://aalto.zoom.us/j/7409986395
9:15 – 10:50 (with 5 min. break halfway through)
Lecture around alternative economic narratives as practiced in the expanded field of art, including short screenings/snippets of some referenced works. There is no assigned reading for this session rather, there is an assigned viewing of Bahar Noorizadeh’s recent work ‘Teslaism: Economics at the End of the End of the Future’ (please find description, Vimeo link and password and details below), you can also find a link to the video’s script.
11:00 – 12:00
Please watch the Teslasim and jot down any questions you many have since Bahar will be our guest via Zoom from 11:00 – 12:00. She will present her work and practice and this will be followed with a Q and A.
About the Assigned Viewing
Teslaism: Economics at the End of the End of the Future (2022) - 30 minutes
Teslaism is a 3rd person racing musical game featuring Tesla Inc. CEO Elon Musk and his self-driving car/lover and life coach, as they drive towards a shareholder meeting in a post-gamified Berlin landscape. The work takes the newly built Gigafactory in Berlin as a prism to describe the emergence of Teslaism (succeeding Post-Fordism) as a novel system of production and consumption predicated on advanced storytelling, financial worldbuilding, and imagineering “the look of the future.” The Teslaist CEO is a collage artist. Weaving together one tweet, one dance move, one meme after another, he creates a set of perpetually postponed and too-fabulous-to-be-fake narratives to make time make power. If post-industrial Detroit was soundtracked to techno’s futures, the age of Teslaism seeks its own common sonic imaginaries: forms of resistance inhabiting our exceedingly financialized cities.
Post-Fordism is used to describe the economic paradigm dependent on the dominance of a flexible and permanently innovative pattern of accumulation. It is based on flexible production, the labour of highly skilled workers as well as the service class, and increased profits based on technological innovations. Historically, Post-Fordism comes after Fordism (named after the Ford Motor company) which established an economy of large corporations that made mass-consumer items with assembly line techniques. Production was standardised and, once begun, really rather difficult to reconfigure. Noorizadeh’s work proposes that Teslaism, a speculative economic paradigm centred on “Imagineering”, worldbuilding and predicting the future as opposed to production – flexible or otherwise – ought to be considered as the paradigm of our times. How can we address this turn, and how can it help us reflect on the work we do as practicing creatives?
VIMEO LINK:
Password: Giga
LINK TO TESLAISM SCRIPT:
https://mega.nz/file/4fUS0aTT#moppGJedKGH9JEfZu2ZAlj-oQIf4xExIr2ciDRS9U-Y
About Bahar Noorizadeh
Bahar Noorizadeh is an artist, writer and filmmaker. Her research examines the historical advance of speculative activity and its derivative politics in art, urban life, and finance and economics. She's currently a PhD candidate at Goldsmiths, University of London.
Wednesday 9 November
DAOs and the blockchain, an Introduction to their developments within the arts economy
Featuring guest speaker and interlocutor: Aude Launay
This session is a general enquiry into the blockchain’s emergence within the art sphere, looking at DAOs and NFTs. It will start with a general overview (talk) that will be followed up by a presentation and discussion with Aude Launay via Zoom. Please find all reading in the session’s dedicated reading folder.
About our Guest Speaker and Interlocutor
Aude Launay is an independent writer and curator trained as a philosopher. Her research focuses on distributed decision-making through algorithmic and blockchain-based processes in art. More generally, she is interested in art that interferes with the power mechanisms underpinning governance structures. http://www.launayau.de/
Zoom Link for Guest talk:
https://aalto.zoom.us/j/7409986395
Essential Reading
Aude Launay (2022), From the Automation of Relations to the Amplification of Communities: The Rise of DAOs. In ‘Between the Material and the Possible: Infrastructural Re-examination and Speculation in Art.’ (Please find book attached)
Penny Rafferty (2022), A Speculative White Paper on the Aesthetics of a Black Swan World. In ‘REALTY, Beyond the Traditional Blueprints of Art & Gentrification.’ (Please find book attached)
Further Reading
Laura Lotti & Calum Bowden (2022), Manifesting a Black Swan DAO. In ‘Radical Friends: Decentralised Autonomous Organisations and the Arts.’ (Please find book attached)
Wassim Z. Alsindi (2022), ‘The Revolution Will Not Be Tokenised', Spike Art Magazine no.70
Martin Zeilinger (2022), ‘Can the blockchain finally create a commons?’, Spike Art Magazine no.70
Jeffrey Kirkwood (2022), ‘From Work to Proof of Work: Meaning and Value after Blockchain’, Critical Inquiry, 48.
ALL READING CAN BE DOWNLOADED HERE: https://mycourses.aalto.fi/mod/folder/view.php?id=969461
Wednesday 16 November
Scenario Planning as Creative Practice
Looking at how visual cultural practices can be envisioned as scenario planning in particular in relation to thinking the economy otherwise.
Featuring guest speaker and interlocutor: Laura Cugusi
Zoom Link: https://aalto.zoom.us/j/7409986395
Essential/Required
‘The Infrastructure of Prediction’ Podcast episode from the Art and Artifice of Prediction Podcast series.
In this episode of The Art and Artifice of Prediction, we turn to art and visual culture. Maria Christou (University of Manchester) talks to Theo Reeves-Evison (Birmingham City University), who examines the ways in which infrastructures of prediction are responded to in visual culture - or even initiated by it.
https://open.spotify.com/episode/04DvcEXxJnWCvTSuICQIAq?si=O1FnMCXUTlO0uKZrrufxTw
Mentioned/Other Reading
Cassandra Collective’s essay ‘How to Break Free from the Ghosts of the Future’ in Between the Material and the Possible
Foreword and Introduction to the Book ‘Economic Science Fictions’ (see in folder)
Kim Stanley Robinson’s novel ‘The Ministry for the Future’ (see in folder)
About our Guest
Laura Cugusi an artist, writer, researcher and producer. Her practice has been nomadic across languages, disciplines and media. After studies in media, politics, sociology and urban design, Laura has been working in research and reporting, documentary photography and video production, project management and programme design with artists, collectives, international organisations, urban initiatives, NGOs, academic and art institutions and media platforms in Egypt, Italy, Morocco, Spain, Greece, the UK and Germany. www.lauracugusi.net
Wednesday 23 November
Degrowth and its Reverberations in Art
The morning starts with a short lecture on the concept of degrowth from the perspective of constructive criticism, this will be followed by 1.30 mins for group work to develop your presentations for 'The Strange Economics Vocabulary List' assignment on 30 November. Some related reading materials have been added to reading folder.
Wednesday 30 November
The Strange Economics Vocabulary List: Collaboratively Developed Creative Entries into the Lexicon of Economics (Assignment Discussion)