Download individual chapters here.
About the book: MoneyLab is a network of artists, activists, and geeks experimenting with forms of financial democratization. Entering the 10th year of the global financial crisis, it still remains a difficult yet crucial task to distinguish old wine from its fancy new bottles. The MoneyLab network questions persistent beliefs, from Calvinist austerity, growth, and up-scaling, to trustless, automated decision making and (anarcho-)capitalist dreams of cybercurrencies and blockchained solutionism.
We consider experiments with digital coops, internet-based payment and network-based revenue models as spaces of political imagination, with an equally important aesthetic program. In this second MoneyLab Reader the network delves into topics like the financialization of art; love as a binary proposition on the blockchain; the crowdfunding of livelihood; the cashless society; financial surveillance of the poor; universal basic income as the real McCoy or a real sham; the cooperative answer to Airbnb and Uber; the history of your financial dashboard; and, Hollywood’s narration of the financial crisis. Fintech rushes through our veins, causing a whirlwind of critical concepts, ideas and imaginaries. Welcome to the eye of the storm.
Contributors: Jaya Klara Brekke, Tripta Chandola, Max Dovey, Economic Space Agency, General Intellect, Max Haiven, Robert Herian, David Hollanders, Dmytri Kleiner, Silvio Lorusso, Laura Lotti, Nathalie Maréchal, Rachel O’Dwyer, Nina Power, Patricia Reed, Patrice Riemens, Emily Rosamond, Trebor Scholz, Brett Scott, Nathaniel Tkacz, Pablo R. Velasco, Martin Zeilinger.
Colophon: Editors: Inte Gloerich, Geert Lovink and Patricia de Vries. Copy editing: Ed Graham. Cover design: Anastasia Kubrak. Design: Inte Gloerich. EPUB development: Inte Gloerich. Printer: Drukkerij Tuijtel, Hardinxveld-Giessendam. Publisher: Institute of Network Cultures.
This publication is supported by the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences. MoneyLab Reader 2 is part of the State Machines project. This project has been funded with the support from the European Commission. This communication reflects the views only of the authors, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.
Institute of Network Cultures, Amsterdam 2018
ISBN 978-94-92302-19-9
This publication was supported by many generous crowdfunding donors: Johanne Aarup, Panayotis Antoniadis, Danielle Axelroud, Liya Belenska, Armin Beverungen, Asher Boersma, J.J. Bosma, Chris Clarke, Michael Dieter, Dan Diojdescu, Leonieke van Dipten, Paul Dourish, Max Dovey, Esther van Duin, Tom Elsner, David Garcia, Justin Hager, Anne Helmond, May Hen, Julia Janssen, Benedict Jacobs, Slobodan Jokic, Steve Jones, Magnus Kelstrup, Silvio Lorusso, Peter Lunenfeld, Liam Magee, Rene Magieu, Jens Martignoni, Theo de Meyer, Arjen Mulder, Vera van de Nieuwenhof, Rachel O’Dwyer, Angela Pana, Lídia Pereira, Jesse Ramirez, Emilie Randoe, Renée Ridgway, Maxwell Ryan, Jessy Schingler, Maarten Sprenger, Marie-Anne Soyez, Michael Stevenson, Graham St. John, Alejandro Tortolini, Nathaniel Tkacz, Sonja van der Valk, Rein Vanhoe, Lonneke van der Velden, Marina Vishmidt, Christian Villum, Soenke Zehle
Inte Gloerich, Geert Lovink, Patricia de Vries – Introduction
Updating Digital Economy
Patricia Reed – Optimist Realism
Nina Power – Necro-Capitalism and Counter-Images
Nathaniel Tkacz and Pablo R. Velasco – Experience Money
Blockchain Criticism
Robert Herian – Blockchain and the Distributed Reproduction of Capitalist Class Power
Jaya Klara Brekke – Postcards from the World of Decentralized Money
Performing Future Finance
Martin Zeilinger – Contemporary Art Between Algomysticism and Fintech Activism
Laura Lotti – Financialization as a Medium
Emily Rosamond – It Sees (Notes Toward a Cultural History of Financial Vision)
David Hollanders – The Reception of the Financial Crisis in Hollywood Movies
Critiques of the Grand Schemes
Rachel O’Dwyer – Things that Transact
Brett Scott – Cash in the Era of the Digital Payments Panopticon
Tripta Chandola – The Demons of Demonitization
Nathalie Maréchal – The Data Paradox
Alternatives in Financial Imagination
Trebor Scholz – How to Coop the Digital Economy
Dmytri Kleiner – Universal Basic Income is a Neoliberal Plot to Make You Poorer
Patrice Riemens – Precarity is the Present, Universal Basic Income the Future
Economic Space Agency – On Intensive Self-Issuance
General Intellect – Commonfare or the Welfare of the Commonwealth
Appendices
Eduard de Jong, Geert Lovink, Patrice Riemens – 10 Bitcoin Myths