TO HAVE AND TO OWE
September 21 - October 27, 2012
Events with: Arts & Labor, Richard Dienst, Jennifer Flores Sternad, Fran Ilich, Randy Martin, Annie McClanahan, Occupy University, Cassie Thornton, and Caroline Woolard
Infographics by: Brendan Griffiths, Zak Klauck & Mylinh Trieu Nguyen
Organized by: Leigh Claire La Berge & Laurel Ptak with assistance from designer Eric Nylund & intern Gina Bull
Debt has been inscribed as a fundamental mechanism of power, force and subjugation in contemporary society and it affects nearly all of us in one way or another through forms like credit card, healthcare, student and mortgage debt as well as our national debt and the indebtedness of nations to one another. While debt is front and center as an issue in both politics and our personal lives, the basis of its control seems directly related to the fact that it is experienced so abstractly. Debt exists as both an absence and a presence. And though debt is socially enforced it is almost always individually experienced and this tension makes it difficult to represent collectively. To Have And To Owe asks, what happens if we work towards undoing debt’s unrepresentabilty? What if we experienced debt as a shared cultural form that is perceptible, communicable or materialized? How can debt be rendered as a nuanced historical, philosophical and even aesthetic problem in all of its social thickness inside American life?
From September 21–October 27, 2012, EFA Project Space presents To Have and To Owe, the live manifestation of a research platform focused on understanding debt and the social relations that debt engenders. A range of artists and theorists whose work deals with questions of financialization, exchange, art's relationship to debt, and more, have been invited to offer lectures, workshops, performances, discussions, quilting sessions and visualizations to explore this subject and open up a space in which its aesthetic and social dimensions may be considered as part of its economic register. During the five weeks, EFA Project Space will function as an event site, reading room, and accumulative bulletin board where participants and audience members are welcome to post and distribute diverse visual and textual materials around the subject of debt. Commissioned info graphics will provide alternative models to mapping and realizing economic knowledge and a specially assembled debtors library is open to the public including texts that address debt from theoretical, historical and tactical perspectives.
For the complete press release, click here.
Check out the To Have And To Owe TUMBLR that chronicles documentation of events.
SCHEDULE OF EVENTS
click each title for further information
Friday, September 21, 6- 8pm To Have and To Owe Opening & Performance by Cassie Thornton
Monday, September 24, 7:30pm Reading Group
Discussing chapters 1-5 of David Graeber's Debt: The First 5,000 Years
Monday, October 1, 7:30pm Reading Group
Discussing chapters 6-9 of David Graeber's Debt: The First 5,000 Years
Wednesday, October 3, 7:00pm Debt & Growth with Andrew Ross
Andrew Ross's discussion focuses on why our present money system can only function in a growing economy. This event is a part of Occupy University's Debt Discussion Series
Thursday, October 4, 6:30pm Lecture: Leigh Claire La Berge & Annie McClanahan
To Have and to Owe co-organizer Leigh Claire La Berge and theorist Annie McClanahan will share their respective work on cultural representations of debt--from how the language and metaphors of finance impact how we understand the social world around us to how photographics depictions of foreclosure show economies and aesthetics in tandem and in tension.
Saturday, October 6, 1:00pm Arts & Labor Discussion & Quilting Session
OWS working group Arts and Labor has initiated DEBT SQUARES, a series of open workshops inspired by the tradition of craft circles, during which everyone is invited to sew together fabric squares, express our personal relationship with different kinds of debt, and bring our shared conditions to the open.
Tuesday, October 9, 6:30pm Research Group: Diego de la Vega Experimental Economies & Finance Group
The Diego de la Vega Experimental Economies and Finance Research Group interrogates debt as an instrument used historically to organize society, and presents new approaches for how to liberate and transcend debt considering topics like money as abstraction, sovereign debt, ecological debt, and neocolonialism. With Fran Ilich, curator/academic Jennifer Flores Sternad and others.
Thursday, October 11, 6:30pm Lecture: Richard Dienst
Theorist Richard Dienst will consider the social worlds created by debt and look at indebtedness as a form of social, economic and political bond—as explored in his recent book The Bonds of Debt: Borrowing Against the Common Good.
Monday, October 15, 7:30pm Reading Group
Discussing chapters 1-2 of Maurizio Lazzarato's The Making of the Indebted Man
Tuesday, October 16, 6:30pm Rethinking Your MFA: Looking at Art as the Bi-Product of Debt
Join artist Cassie Thornton in a conversation about the value and values of an education in art. In art school we make art and debt, but the debt is invisible and private. What are we really contributing to when we get an MFA? What happens when we look at art as the by-product of debt?
Wednesday, October 17, 7:00pm A Brief History of Debt Resistance with George Caffentzis
The class will trace the forms of debt resistance in the past, aiming to glean the knowledge of those involved in previous anti-debt struggles to help us in our debt resistance today. This event is a part of Occupy University's Debt Discussion Series
Thursday, October 18, 7:00pm The Visual Culture of Debt with Nick Mirzoeff
This event is a part of Occupy University's Art of Debt Series
Friday, October 19, 7:00pm Strike Debt, Contemporary Art & the Specter of Communization w/ Yates McKee
This event is a part of Occupy University's Art of Debt Series
Saturday, October 20, 2:00pm On Municipal Debt with Ann Larson
Come and learn about municipal bonds, the favorite weapon of mafia capitalists everywhere! This event is a part of Occupy University's Debt of Discussion Series
Monday, October 22, 7:30pm Reading Group
Discussing chapter 3-"conclusion" of Maurizio Lazzarato's The Making of the Indebted Man
Wednesday, October 24, 6:30pm Lecture: Randy Martin
What is a derivative? Why does it matter to art or the humanities? NYU Professor of Art and Public Policy and Director of the Graduate Program in Arts Politics, Randy Martin, will speak about the relationship between financial derivatives and forms of debt in the production and circulation of art.
Friday, October 26, 7:00pm Debt, Desire, Denial with Winter and Nicole Hala
What do we want in life? What do we need? How does this relate to debt, to consumer society, to a consumer economy, to austerity, and to global disparity? This event is a part of Occupy University's Debt of Discussion Series
Saturday, October 27, 4:00pm Workshop with Caroline Woolard
In a workshop about the theory and practice of barter, Caroline Woolard will demonstrate the power of relationships based on mutual credit (not mutual debt) and perform a ritual of erasing money.
By Appointment: Debt Visualizations with Cassie Thornton
