Finance and Society
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Introduction: On the ethics of debt
Get PDFThis special issue stems from a 2015 conference on the ‘Ethics of Debt’, organised by the guest editors and held at Iowa State University. Three themes emerged from the conference and are represented in the articles and documentary film selected for the special issue. The first concerns representations of debt in art and literature. The second theme demonstrates how debt arises and functions in specific contexts. The final theme addresses moral and ethical responses to debt within society
Discourse ethics for debt markets
Get PDFThis article develops a pragmatic theory of finance in which markets are considered to be centres of communicative action in the face of uncertainty. This contrasts with the conventional approach that portrays markets as centres of strategic action in the face of scarcity. The argument follows Habermas and entails that a financial market must address the truthfulness, truth, and rightness of the statements made by its participants (i.e., the prices quoted). I claim that these discursive norms have been implicit in historical financial markets as expressed in the norms of sincerity, reciprocity, and charity. I conclude by proposing that ‘trust’ in commerce is a synthesis of the three discursive norms. The motivation of the article is to address the crisis of legitimacy that the financial system is experiencing, particularly in the United Kingdom (UK) and the United States (US)
Debtfare states and the labour of finance
Get PDFReview of Susanne Soederberg, Debtfare States and the Poverty Industry: Money, Discipline and the Surplus Population, London, Routledge, 2014, 284 pp., £26.99 (pbk), ISBN 978-0-415-82267-
Whisper - Status code: No entity found
No full text2K-single channel video, colour, 2.1 sound, 4:49 min., 2016. Video and audio: Eckermann/Text: Nestler. Sylvia Eckermann is an Austrian artist whose critical reflections engage with our (in)dividual entanglement in socio-political situations. Eckermann works with various media including digital and physical environments, game mods, installations, videos, objects and sculptures. Her work has been shown internationally since 1989. Among other grants and awards, she is the first recipient of the City of Vienna Award for Media Art (2014). Gerald Nestler is an artist and writer (and sometimes curator) who combines theory and conversation with installation, performance, video, sound, text and speech to explore what he calls the 'derivative condition' of contemporary lif
Contemporary art and financialization: Two approaches
Get PDFThis essay identifies two approaches to theorizing the relationship between financialization and contemporary art. The first departs from an analysis of how market logics in non-financial spheres are being transformed to facilitate financial circulation; the other considers valuation practices in financial markets (and those related to derivative instruments in particular) from a socio-cultural perspective. According to the first approach, the contemporary art market is in theory a hostile environment for financialization, although new practices are emerging that are increasing its integration with the financial sphere. The second approach identifies socio- cultural similarities between the logics by which value is extracted, amplified, and distributed through derivative instruments and contemporary art. The two approaches present a discrepancy: on the one hand, contemporary art functions as an impediment to outright financialization because of market opacity; on the other, contemporary art represents a socio- cultural analog to derivative instruments. The essay concludes by setting out the terms for a more holistic understanding of contemporary art’s relationship to financialization, which would enable an integration of its economic and socio-cultural dimensions
Everything is always (the liquid protocol)
Get PDFUBERMORGEN are lizvlx (AT, 1973) and Hans Bernhard (CH/USA, 1971), European artists and net.art pioneers. They tenaciously convert code & language and concept & aesthetics into digital objects, software art, net.art, installation, new painting, videos, press releases and actions. CNN described them as ‘maverick Austrian business people’ and the New York Times called Google Will Eat Itself ‘simply brilliant’. Their main influences are Rammstein, Samantha Fox, Guns N’ Roses & Duran Duran, Olanzapine, LSD & Kentucky Fried Chicken’s Coconut Shrimps Deluxe. Visit their website at http://ubermorgen.co
The necessity of multi-disciplinary scholarship for finance: On Ayache and Roffe
Get PDFAyache presents a view of markets and mathematics that attempts to conform to the philosophies of Alain Badiou and Quentin Meillassoux. However, this attempt is unsuccessful because Ayache adopts a view of probability rooted in nineteenth-century conceptions that cannot accommodate the radical uncertainty of the markets. This is unfortunate as it is reasonable to believe that the ideas of Badiou and Meillassoux, when synthesised with contemporary ideas of probability, could offer interesting insights. Roffe presents a better argued synthesis of Deleuze and markets, however he makes similar assumptions about contemporary probability that undermine his conclusions
Model hagiography: A reply to Johnson and Munger on probability, philosophy and transcendental argumentation
Get PDFIn his review of my recent book, Abstract Market Theory, Johnson mistakes my investigation into the conditions and limits of probabilistic reasoning as a rejection of its sense and utility. The same misunderstanding also appears in a review by Munger published recently. In both cases this leads to a skewed and reductive understanding of my reconception of the relationship between price and value. In this response, I present an outline of the philosophical goals of Abstract Market Theory. My intent is not just to show that these reviews are incorrect in their presentation of my argument, but to also indicate why a philosophical perspective remains indispensable for our understanding of the market
Terminal value: Building the alternative Bloomberg
Get PDFIn this essay we propose a reframing of the Bloomberg Terminal, an interface used to track financial trades and values, by using it as a creative, critical and curatorial device to explore the relationship between the art and finance. To contextualise this approach, we offer a history of the Bloomberg Terminal alongside an analysis of the power of interfaces to shape both the user and the represented information. We use the terminal as a way to critique the relationship between art acquisition and financial trading companies. We then describe some outcomes of a series of workshops themed around the idea of ‘building an alternative Bloomberg’. We conclude by offering some potential applications of a re-framed Bloomberg Terminal as an open and modular interface for engaging with issues around art and finance, both in terms of content and curation
Dynamic global infrastructure: The freeport as value chain
Get PDFIn an interview with China Daily in 2014, Wang Yudong, director of the art trade centre at the Beijing Culture Free Port, declared: “We have mapped out a global free-port strategy. Our aim is to build an art free-port network in Asia” (Deng, 2014: para. 5). Facilitated by state partners from Geneva to Singapore, Luxembourg, Germany, Paris and the state-affiliated Beijing Gehua Cultural Development Group of the Beijing Freeport of Culture, freeports are believed by many governmental organisations to be a fast-track to a more mature and sustainable art market. In broad terms, freeports are special customs areas, or small customs territories, in which customs regulations are generally less strict, or for which there are no customs duties. Though each freeport varies slightly in terms of its individual jurisdictional arrangement with the respective states, they have established themselves as prominent nodes for international wealth and its traffic