Abstract

We imagine that art and money are old enemies, but this myth actually reproduces a violent system of global capitalism and prevents us from imagining and building alternatives.

From the chaos unleashed by the 'imaginary' money in financial markets to the new forms of exploitation enabled by the 'creative economy' to the way art has become the plaything of the world's plutocrats, our era of financialization demands we question our romantic assumptions about art and money. By exploring the way contemporary artists engage with cash, debt and credit, Haiven identifies and assesses a range of creative strategies for mocking, sabotaging, exiting, decrypting and hacking capitalism today.

Written for artists, activists and scholars, this book makes an urgent call to unleash the power of the radical imagination by any media necessary.
'Daring, brilliant, provocative. At last a radical critique of the crypto-approach and an abolitionist approach to the problem of money and art'
Franco Berardi, Philosopher, author of Futurability: The Age of Impotence and the Horizon of Possibility (Verso, 2017)
'Perhaps the most theoretically creative radical thinker of the moment'
– David Graeber, author of Debt: The First 5000 Years (Melville House, 2014)