Economic Space Agency, Open Garage, Saturdays, Oakland, California
Economic Space Conference
A conference on alternative economies
20.1 2018
Stockholm
Economic Space Conference
Date: Saturday 20 January 2018
Time: at 13–17.30
Place: the Auditorium, floor 2
Language: English
Price: admission free
Moderna Museet and the Stockholm School of Economics invite you to discussions with artists and economists on cryptocurrencies and the future of the economy, with a specific focus on the artistic practice of Economic Space Agency. This conference is part of the exhibition Manipulate the World – Connecting Öyvind Fahlström, and takes place during the final weekend of the exhibition.
Öyvind Fahlström’s work “World Bank”, featured in the exhibition Manipulate the World, is closely linked to the theme of the conference. A gold depot is at the centre of this staged installation, which is a geopolitical analysis of the world economy from 1971.“World Bank” is contemporary with the abandonment of the gold standard and the emergence of the current financialized economy which has come to define today’s debt relations, increasing concentration of capital and uneven distribution of risk.
Economic Space Agency is a startup company in San Francisco aimed at democratising the financial sector. Their innovations in cryptocurrency – i.e. digital, non-governmental currencies such as bitcoin – have been described as “an alternative way of occupying Wall Street”. Their network extends from post-Marxist philosophers and human rights activists, to internet innovators and financial anarchists.
Conference participants
Programme participants include Akseli Virtanen and his team (Economic Space Agency), Tiziana Terranova (the University of Naples), Brian Kuan Wood (e-flux journal), and some ten economic researchers (the Stockholm School of Economics).
Tiziana Terranova is an Italian theorist and activist, whose work focuses on social change in network culture. Since the monograph Network Culture: Politics for the Information Age (2004), she has published her research in numerous articles and essays. Tiziana Terranova is a frequent keynote speaker at conferences on economic and technological activism.
Brian Kuan Wood is a writer based in New York, and founder of the digital e-flux journal. In addition to writing profusely about and with various artists, he has been the editor of publications such as “The Internet Does Not Exist” (2015) and “Are You Working Too Much? Post-Fordism, Precarity, and the Labor of Art” (2011).
The researchers from the Stockholm School of Economics focus on changes in the interaction between society and economy in areas including gender, funding, production work, social entrepreneurship, sustainability, consumption, distribution of wealth, profitability, and democracy.
Programme
13.00–13.10
Welcome and introductions by Fredrik Liew, curator Moderna Museet and Pierre Guillet de Monthoux, SSE Art Initiative
13.15–14.00
Economic Space Agency: New Monetary Perspectivism by Akseli Virtanen and crew
14.00–14.15
Questions from the Audience and the group of researchers from the Stockholm School of Economics
14.15–14.45
New Economic Agency by Tiziana Terranova
14.45–15.15
Coffee break
15.15–16.00
Pure metrics of new economic space by Brian Kuan Wood
16.00–16.45
Finance as a mode of Expression by Economic Space Agency
16.45–17.30
What is a Coin Offering?
Akseli Virtanen
In association with the SSE Art Initiative, the Stockholm School of Economics.