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.

Program

Thursday 1 December
9:00 – 9:30 – Registration

9:30 – 9:45 – Introduction by Geert Lovink

9:45 – 11:15 – Session: Global Finance: Failing Better? featuring Virginia Alvarez, Alex Foti, Renzo Martens & Cassie Thornton

11:15 – 12:30 – Session: When Art Mirrors Marx featuring Tori Abernathy, Steyn Bergs, Max Haiven, Jeroen Van Loon & Dan Mihaltianu.

12:30 – 13:30 – Lunch Break

13:30 – 15:00 – Workshops: How Can Accountants Save the World?
Politics of the Cyphersphere Prevailing over Money

15:00 – 15:30 – Break

15:30 – 17:30 – Session 6: Save The Last Dance featuring Bindu de Knock, Henry Warwick & Koos Zwaan

18:00 – onwards – Fiscal Drag Live at Mezrab Featuring the University of the Phoenix Eulogy for Excellence Dinner & Fine Art Finance Lab

Friday 2 December


9:30 – 10:00 – Registration

10:00 – 11:15 – Session 7: Co-operatives and the Commons featuring Trebor Scholz, Michel Vogler & Arthur Röing Baer

11:15 – 12:30 – Session 8: Big Pocket is Watching You! featuring Austin Houldsworth, Nathalie Maréchal, Emily Rosamond & Brett Scott

12:30 – 13:30 – Lunch Break

13:30 – 15:00 – Workshops
Governance in the Age of Blockchains and Digital Currencies
Flexonomix District Currency Game Role Play Your Way to Budgetary Blockchain Bliss

15:00 – 15:30 – Break

15:30 – 17:30 – Session 12: UBI: For One and for All? featuring Tori Abernathy, Baruch Gottlieb, Johannes Ponader & Patrice Riemens

21:00 – onwards – Failing Better Afterparty

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.

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.