MoneyLab #3 Failing Better 

Symposium | Workshops | Exhibition
1 - 2 December 2016
Pakhuis de Zwijger, Amsterdam

A two-day symposium featuring talks, workshops and performances that confront the notion that finance is too big to fail.         

Themes include: 

Universal Basic Income, Feminist Economics, Global Finance, Financial Surveillance, Post-Work Society, Decentralized Democracy, Blockchain, Smart Contracts, Credit Unions, DAOs, Publishing Models, P2P Distribution, Copyright Law, Streaming Models, Platform Cooperativism, Community Currencies, Commons Transition

Background

After Bitcoin forked, and remains in tatters, it is now blockchain technology that ignites visions of deregulated and decentralized organization, while it is simultaneously sanitized by commercial banks. Meanwhile the sharing and “service” economy lost its innocuous veneer and streaming services have failed and continue to fold the music industry. Despite the mutation of crowdfunding into crowd-equity and platform co-operatives, artists and designers continue to struggle to financially support themselves. All the while the financial mediators of the previous centuries continue to drag themselves onward into global debt. 

We are failing better, nonetheless. Workers’ unions are on the rise and numerous collectives are working together to collectively ensure their own wellbeing and build alternative models of social governance. The aspirations of grassroots organizations such as DiEM25, that promise to liberate social democracy from the stronghold of global finance, are gaining momentum across Europe. People’s parties such as Podemos and the Five Star Movement get closer to an electoral majority. This momentum has thrust radical economic alternatives onto center stage and some governments in Europe have begun experimenting with progressive policies such as a living working wage and a universal basic income.

MoneyLab #3 will assess the ambition of financial provocations that have ignited to establish a terrain of social and political reform, from decentralized networks to state governments. The rift we find ourselves in goes much further than 'the banks’ and financial retaliation can be considered more than attempts to fail better.

Speakers include:

Tori Abernathy, Steyn Bergs, Alex Foti, Max Haiven, Austin Houldsworth, Lewis Just, Dmytri Kleiner, Bindu De Knock, Simona Levi, Jeroen Van Loon, Silvio Lorusso, Nathalie Maréchal, Renzo Martens, Dan Mihaltianu, Caroline Nevejan, Patrice Riemens, Emily Rosamond, Trebor Scholz, Brett Scott, Cassie Thornton & Henry Warwick.

Workshops:

Baltan Laboratories, Feminist Economics Department, Fine Art Financ€ Lab, Furtherfield, Nethood, PublishingLab & University of the Phoenix.

Evening Program

Thursday 1 Dec: Fiscal Drag Live, Mezrab, Amsterdam
Friday 2 Dec: Failing Better Afterparty, Roest, Amsterdam

Practical information
Tickets:            € 10 per session
                        € 30 per day
                        € 60 two day pass
Students:        50% discount on all tickets
All tickets include lunch and evening program.

 
networkcultures.org/moneylab

@INCAmsterdam #MoneyLab
 
MoneyLab is an initiative of the Institute of Network Cultures, Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences, CREATE-IT, Amsterdam Center of Expertise, and the Amsterdam Creative Industries Network.