I was sitting in a cafe, back in 2019, considering whether to steal the inspiring and very hip magazine I was reading, when I received an email from Canberra-based Associate Professor Denise Thwaites. Denise had been given my contact details by a mutual friend and Indigenous thinker doing exciting work in the fields of artificial intelligence and robotics.
Denise invited me to take part in an Australian-based edition of MoneyLab, an international multi-disciplinary network of artists, designers, programmers, researchers and journalists, and an initiative of the Institute of Network Cultures. Earlier in 2019, the institute’s director Geert Lovink had run some masterclasses at RMIT, which I attended, and I learned about MoneyLab then. (It’s mind-blowing.) Denise had met with Professor Lovink and expressed her concerns about the Eurocentric inflexion of many blockchain arts programs at the time. So, they hatched a plan to develop a MoneyLab 2020 program that would highlight research from the Asia-Pacific region.
I accepted the invitation, and the rest is history.
(Well, actually, the part about how the entire operation jujitsu-pivoted from a Canberra-based in-situ event to a hybrid in-situ-and-online event due to “The” pandemic is part of that history that may not have been inferred from the previous nine-word paragraph, but generally speaking, the rest is history.)
I was assigned to a session with three other panellists talking on the following topic: Decolonising Money: Colonial Impulses, Systems Sovereignty and Economic Autonomy. (My talk starts at 1:43:00.)
My goal was to speak about how the origin of establishing the foundation of modern finance and capital is based on the historical dispossession of Indigenous tribal lands in the United States – and how that innovation became a global mechanism of colonisation. My aim was not to claim to have any kind of solution about how to decolonise money – but to offer a provocation that by understanding the roots of the global financial system, the audience might gain an understanding of what it means to decolonise money.
What does it mean to decolonise money?
It means restructuring the entire global financial system as we know it. How to do that is something we all have to figure out together – but I argue that the solution is connected to how we think about land and our relationship to it.
It was humbling and exciting to take part in an incredibly rich and diverse event exploring the myths that shape our economic realities. There are two days worth of sessions available as an online resource, and an ever-evolving bank of artistic interventions, exhibitions and experiments to continue through 2021-22. You will find a growing collection of projects featured as part of the Economythologies experiment.
It was also my second-only public speaking engagement, so I was pretty nervous! But it was wonderful! I’m very glad I did it. (If you’re someone who’s anxious about whether to accept a speaking engagement because you think you don’t know enough about the topic, just do it. You’ll find what you need, and once you’ve done it, you’ll feel a sense of achievement. You’ll realise you didn’t have to know everything – nobody knows everything. You’ll also make great connections, and you’ll have a piece of work that you can look back on in future.)
Thanks Denise, Laurie McDonald, my fellow panellists, and to the custodians of Ngunnawal country.
MoneyLab #X was co-presented by Centre for Creative and Cultural Research (University of Canberra), Institute for Culture and Society (Western Sydney University), School of Art and Design (Australian National University), Holistic Computing Aesthetics Network and Cultural Value Impact Network (RMIT University), Ainslie+Gorman Arts Centres and Bett Gallery with the support of Despoinas Media Coven and the Institute of Network Cultures.
Oh – and I didn’t steal the magazine.
Escritoire Noir 