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Socio-economic Cocktail
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Sarah Lewison
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Apr 20, 2004 13:38 PDT
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Hello everyone,
this is to fill in more detail on the session on
cooperation and economics on Sunday afternoon.
Four years ago I posted the sale price of a house in
SF on RTmark and asked for pledges to enable an
amorphous 'us' to purchase it. I was surprised to
get responses. As a formal financial structure it
would have been owned by all involved, and used as
temporary housing, research residencies and for an
info-shop and such. No, i am not trying to buy a house
anymore, but I am still sociopathically troubled by
economics. How consciously do people construct or
participate in alternative economies as part of their
cooperative or even individual practices. Yes it can
be a bore to think about, and we are conditioned to
consider this area private. How to contest these facts
alone? I will serve cocktails in an attempt to
lubricate our proceedings.
"Karl Polanyi documents a transition from primarily
viewing the economy as being embedded in social
relations to seeing social relations as being embedded
in the economy. He saw that society had become an
accessory to the economic system instead of vice
versa. This reversal meant that people could say that
the economy is functioning “well” without looking at
how people are differentially effected. It also meant
that economists focused on understanding “laws” of
supply and demand, looking at charts and numbers, and
not really understanding the social implications of
their figures and economic projections. According to
Polanyi, we work to move people in order to help the
system move forward instead of working to change the
system to enhance people’s lives. Polanyi did not see
this as a “natural” evolution but that it is new and
has occurred because of human choices." (Cheri
Ketchum)
Our participation in the exchange of state issued
currencies is a special form of forced cooperation par
excellence, due its transparency and totalizing
nature. It is practically unavoidable to participate,
and with our participation we abet the same procedures
of speculation, capitalization, and war investment we
might otherwise have chosen to oppose. Even so, this
forced cooperation is always undercut by the voluntary
exchanges that occur outside of or below the
capitalist belt line, with varying degrees of control
(cf John Duda's problematization of open source's
utility to corporations). There are persistent
attempts to popularize these exchanges, but it is
unclear they make any impact on the rapacious rate at
which people are increasingly immobilized in an
exploitative marketplace. What are promising ways to
seed the emergence of other subjectivities resistant
to mighty mammon?
The intention for this session was to prepare a series
of productive questions participants could study, but
it has not been a fruitful process to find the right
relation of generality to specificity. It boils down
to more personal questions that have to do with value
and exchange; what would you do? what would you
accept? what is theft? how do you get what you need?
The stuff of surveys. I hope that questions are
produced from this meeting, and carried into further
discussion.
People who collaborate and cooperate are experts in
this area, sharing minds, code, labor and coffee, but
there are specificities as to how these exchanges
occur. What can we learn from your specificity? I
wholeheartedly invite everyone else to bring examples,
proposals or questions to this session.
In the event of silence, I will present some models
and manifestos from the deliriously anarchistic to the
bureaucratic, as well as some capitalism-critical
tactical art that some are probably familiar with.
What I don't get to, I will post later. This will be a
summary of a range of strategies. The utopian/silly
part: Is it a contradiction to broach the subject of
collaboratively acquired (through whatever means)
retirement colonies? Maybe a nice mobile home park in
Florida? Oh yes, and I will serve cocktails in an
attempt to lubricate the proceedings- or did I say
that already?
This will be part of
Who says artists can't organize?
featuring presentations as well by
Simon Sheikh of the Nordic Institute, Helsinki,
Finland
and
Georg Schoelhammer, editor of Springerin Magazine
Sunday 3:40pm - 5:30pm Try 13
Who says artists can't organize?
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Sarah Augusta Lewison
http://visarts.ucsd.edu/~slewison
__________________________________
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