TALK | RECLAIMING ECONOMY – mapping and reimagining economic systems, in the arts and beyond

One of the simplest tools we have is a pencil. With a pencil we can redraw and reorganise the way people see things. The Centre for Plausible Economies (CPE) applies this way of thinking to reimagine and reshape economic systems, in contemporary art and beyond. In the public talk a curator and researcher Kuba Szreder will introduce the work of the CPE by discussing the visual essay Icebergian Economies of Contemporary Art, exhibited in the Whitebox of Zeppelin University.

ABOUT CPE

The Centre for Plausible Economies was established by Kathrin Böhm and Kuba Szreder in 2018. It is as an interdisciplinary research cluster, that facilitates artistic interventions in the everyday economies and scrutinises the economic underpinnings of contemporary art. Recognising the already existing but undervalued diversity of art and economy in general, we develop new tools to make this diversity visible, in order to reimagine and reorganise both. Currently CPE is involved in the major redrawing exercise commissioned by the Whitworth in Manchester, as part of their Economics!

The Blockbuster exhibition planned for the Summer of 2022.

BIOGRAPHY

Kuba Szreder PhD is an assistant professor at the department of art theory at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw. Graduate of sociology at the Jagiellonian University (Krakow), he received PhD from the Loughborough University School of the Arts. He combines practice-based research with curating interdisciplinary projects, social engagement and artistic self-organisation. In 2009 he co-initiated Free / Slow University of Warsaw, with which he completed several inquiries into the political economy of contemporary artistic production, such as Joy Forever. Political Economy of Social Creativity (2011) and Art Factory. Division of labor and distribution of resources in the field of contemporary art in Poland (2014). In 2010 he started to cooperate with Critical Practice, a London-based research cluster, with which he conducted several research projects about the modes of being in public (2010-2011), and social values (2012-2016). In 2018 together with Kathrin Böhm he co-initiated the Centre for Plausible Economies, a research cluster devoted to reimagining artistic economies. In 2020 he co-established the Office for Postartistic Services, the aim of which is to employ artistic competences in support of progressive social movements. He is editor and author of several catalogues, books, readers, book chapters, articles and manifestos, in which he scrutunises the social, economic, and theoretical aspects of the expanded field of art. Current research interests include interdependent curating, new models of artistic institutions, postartistic theory and practice. In 2021 his book The ABC of the projectariat: living and working in a precarious art world was published by the Manchester University Press and the Whitworth.