Event of Interest
Making Money Research Workshop: Symposium, “Matters of Currency”
April 27, 2018 9:00 am - April 28, 2018 6:00 pm
From the University at Buffalo Humanities Institute:
Matters of Currency
Buffalo, New York
27–28 April 2018
Click here to register.
We are excited to announce a 2-day symposium MATTERS OF CURRENCY we are organizing in conjunction with the Institute of Network Cultures MoneyLab project in Amsterdam (http://networkcultures.org/moneylab/) around money and its relationship to power, resistance and alternative strategies. The symposium will touch on ideas we’ve addressed in our meetings over the academic year along with new theories and practices.
It is no longer clear how the axiom “money is power” still holds—if it ever did—in an era of cryptocurrencies, local currencies, free trade zones as financial instruments, “cheap nature” and resource extraction, offshore tax havens, and their leaks in things like the paradise papers. The terms “making” and “money” both mutate with their globally distributed technological, financial and legal frameworks now independent of national regulations.
Common to and between all these mutations, a new relationship to the physicality of money appears: what is the matter and materiality of money? What is the current physicality of value? Currency and matter both resonate with multiple significations today, and invoke the need to examine the “making of money” from multiple disciplinary perspectives. This symposium brings together a range of voices contributing to possible answers for these questions, from fields including Philosophy, Art, Architecture, Computer Science, Community Activism and more. Participants will variously examine different forms of money—objects, life and spaces—for their physicalities, or matters.
Through workshops, talks and panel discussions, “Matters of Currency” will shed new light on money- power relations as mirrored in changing relations to technological and material transformations in the world today.
The event is the first North American instance of the international MoneyLab event series, in conjunction with the Humanities Institute Research Workshop “Making Money: Critical Research into Cultures of Exchange.”
Event funded by the Techne Institute for Arts and Emerging Technologies
Organizers:
Chris Lee (Art), Stephanie Rothenberg (Art), Jordan Geiger (Architecture)
PROGRAM SCHEDULE
(please check back for any updates)
Friday, April 27
Locations: Squeaky Wheel (617 Main Street) and Hallwalls Contemporary Arts Center (341 Delaware Avenue)
- 9:00–9:30 am | Coffee/Check-in at Squeaky Wheel
- 9:30–9:45 am | Welcome
- 9:45–11:15 am | Workshop 1: Cassie Thornton
- 11:15–11:30 am | Break
- 11:30 am – 12:30 pm | Workshop 2: Little Sis
- 12:30–1:30 pm | Lunch
- 1:30–2:30 pm | Workshop 3: Paul Kolling/Terra0
- 2:30–3:00 pm | Change of Venues to Hallwalls + Coffee Break
- 3:00–4:00 pm | Screening: Love & Labor, Stephanie Andreou & Sarah Keeling, 2017
- 4:00–5:00 pm | UB Plenary: Jordan Geiger, Chris Lee, Stephanie Rothenberg and UB Faculty
- 5:00–7:00 pm | Keynote: Jason Moore
Saturday, April 28
Location: Hallwalls Contemporary Arts Center, 341 Delaware Avenue
- 9:00–9:30 am | Coffee/Check-in at Hallwalls
- 9:30–10:00 am | Welcome/Introduction
- 10:00 am – 12:00 pm | Panel 1 | Money: Matters of Objects
- Moderated by Leigh Claire La Berge / Fran Ilich & Gabriela Ceja, Max Haiven, Brett Scott
- 12:00–1:30 pm | Lunch
- 1:30–3:30 pm | Panel 2 | Money: Matters of Life
- Moderated by Jason Moore / with Paul Kolling/Terra0, Cassie Thornton, UB Faculty
- 3:30–4:00 pm | Coffee Break
- 4:00–6:00 pm | Panel 3 | Money: Matters of Spaces
- Moderated by Abigail Cooke, Patricia deVries, Adrian Blackwell, Caitlin Blanchfield, Caroline Woolard
Participants include:
Jason W. Moore – author of several books including “Capitalism and the Web of Life” (https://jasonwmoore.com/)
Cassie Thornton – artist and founder of Feminist Economics Department (feministeconomicsdepartment.com)
Max Haiven – author of several books including “Cultures of Financialization” (https://maxhaiven.com/)
Fran Illich and Gabriela Ceja – artists and founders of the digital material sunflower, alternative currency as well as coffee and film co-ops. Review on Aridoamérica project (https://www.artinamericamagazine.com/news-features/news/seed-money-fran-ilich-at-museo-de-los-sures/)
Patricia deVries – scholar and researcher at Institute of Network Cultures
Terra0 – blockchain developers for environmental management and tokenizing of natural resources (http://www.terra0.org/)
Little Sis (Public Accountability Initiative) – Based in Buffalo, creators of free database that power maps influential social networks (https://public-accountability.org/research/littlesis/)
Caroline Woolard – artist and organizer who works collaboratively and collectively as a founding member of Trade School, OurGoods, and BFAMFAPhD. (http://carolinewoolard.com)
Leigh Claire La Berge – professes at the intersection of arts, literature, visual culture and political economy. She is an Assistant Professor in the Department of English at BMCC CUNY. (https://leighclaire-laberge.squarespace.com)
Caitlin Blanchfield – PhD in architectural history and comparative literature and society at Columbia University and a contributing editor to the Avery Review.
Adrian Blackwell – artist, designer and urban theorist whose work focuses on the relation between physical space and political economic forces. He is co-editor of the journal Scapegoat: Architecture / Landscape / Political Economy