Max Haiven: Money's Participatory Arts

Max Haiven: MONEY´S PARTICIPATORY ARTS
FINANCIALIZATION, BENIGN PESSIMISM AND TACTICAL PARASITICS
Gastvortrag

Who dares say an unkind word about participation? In recent years, the enthusiasm for interactivity, collaboration and inclusion in the arts has seemed to be as unimpeachable… as the lawless global financial system itself. In fact, they?re connected. In the first part of this presentation, I suggest that the rise of participatory art is intimately connected to financialization: the seepage of speculative monetary logics and their inevitable crises throughout the social fabric, a dystopian process that nonetheless demands our active participation as subjects. In the second half, I look at a few participatory artists who experiment with critical strategies in this context by using money (coins, bills, digital currency) as a medium of expression. I focus on two interconnected approaches: benign pessimism and tactical parasitics.