The MoneyLab board can be reached here: moneylab-board@networkcultures.org
The Institute of Network Cultures has coordinated the MoneyLab project since 2013. With every instance (conferences, books, etc), a core team came together to define urgent topics, select cutting edge work, and bring the community together. At each moment the network materialized, for example at conferences in London, Buffalo, NY and Siegen (Germany), it accumulated insights, new topics, and connected to more people working in diverse ways to carve out space for a more democratic financial system.
A few months into the 2020 Corona pandemic, MoneyLab #8 was hosted as an online debate series by Aksioma Institute for Contemporary Art out of Ljubljana, Slovenia. At the same time, teams in Helsinki, Berlin, Copenhagen and Canberra were investigating the possibilities of hosting a MoneyLab event locally in the near future. At the INC, we took this international enthusiasm for MoneyLab topics as an incentive to reconsider the organization of the network itself.
Rethinking the economy and experimenting with alternative money design is a global effort. Discussions happen locally with local concerns, as well as within a globally connected economic culture. The organizational structure of MoneyLab needs to reflect this.
That is why the INC MoneyLab team decided to open up the network project. A globally dispersed board has been set up to expand the network, explore emerging topics, and support initiatives of the network. Anyone interested in contributing to MoneyLab can reach out to one or all of the board members. MoneyLab activities can include the entire network, or consist of focussed work with just a few members. The board is not there to direct the network, but rather to allow the various corners to learn from and connect to each other.
The MoneyLab board consists of:
- Max Haiven, Canada Research Chair in Culture, Media and Social Justice at Lakehead University <mhaiven [at] lakeheadu.ca>
- Denise Thwaites, curator and Assistant Professor in Digital Arts and Humanities at the University of Canberra <Denise.Thwaites [at] canberra.edu.au>
- Nathaniel Tkacz, Reader at the Centre for Interdisciplinary Methodologies at Warwick University <nathanieltkacz [at] gmail.com>
- Ela Kagel, co-founder/managing director of Supermarkt, Berlin <ela [at] supermarkt-berlin.net>
- Akseli Virtanen, co-founder of Economic Space Agency, <akseli.virtanen@gmail.com>
- Geert Lovink, founding director of the Institute of Network Cultures, Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences <geert [at] xs4all.nl>
This document is meant to serve as a guide to the history of “MoneyLab 1.0”, as well as an explanation of the particular mix of sensitivities that make up the MoneyLab Agenda. This agenda can inform future choices and serve as inspiration as new technologies emerge and political realities come into being. Find the full document here:
A Distributed MoneyLab – The MoneyLab Agenda
One of the strategies in this new era for MoneyLab is the organization of ‘general assemblies’ to discuss the future of the network with its members. The first one was held during MoneyLab #7 in Amsterdam (November 2019). The documentation of the meeting can be found below: