DEBT. Unsettling Matters of Interest
International Symposium
22-23 May 2025

Abstracts & Bios in alphabetical order:

LUCÍA CAVALLERO
Transfeminist Struggles Against Financial Authoritarianism

The indebtedness of the state and families in Argentina has meant a threshold passage in economic violence and is being confronted from the feminist movement. In this presentation, we will review the historical sequence from the return of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to the global event of the pandemic, and from there to the triumph of the ultra-right and its interpellation to „financial freedom,” highlighting the various political initiatives to confront the regime of financial domination.
Lucía Cavallero is a feminist activist of the Ni Una Menos Collective. She is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Buenos Aires where she works on the relationship between debt and gender.

LUCE deLIRE
The Birth of Debt from the Nature of Value – and a trans lesbian response

Some say debt was a shameful shortcoming of the maladjusted. Some say debt was an instance of misguided cultural engineering. I say: Debt is a necessary dimension of value – and so is its exploitation for coercive means. We are doomed to live inside the problem of debt. The problem is not its existence. The problem is the way we stage it – economically, culturally, affective. Current western societies transform debt into private property by virtue of social contracts. Meanwhile, paradigmatic media environments tend to stage debt according to its principles: societies driven by indexical, digital and AI technologies have their respective ways to take on, treat and punish debt. In my talk, I offer trans lesbian hospitality as a conceptual framework to navigate this metaphysical, technological, economic and political catastrophe.
Luce deLire is a ship with eight sails and she lies down by the quay. She is also a contemporary philosopher, performer, and scholar, currently working as assistant professor at the philosophy department at Humboldt University, Berlin. In her work, she combines political theory, metaphysics, post-colonialism, queer and trans theory. She often explores themes related to anti-fascism, queer politics, and the concept of „shadow democracies,“ which she describes as the retreat of democratic processes behind opaque legal standards and individual responsibilities, leading to a de-politicization of politics. She advocates for „queer hospitality“ and “trans lesbianism” as ways to replace social contracts with hospitality as the organizing principles of contemporary politics, sociality and statecraft. deLire is also a member of trans activist group Selbst Bestimmung Selbst Gemacht. For more, see www.getaphilosopher.com, www.queerokratia.de, IG: Luce_deLire

BASSAM EL BARONI
Strange Progress: Financial Temporality and the Problem of Indifference

The presentation revisits an earlier body of work around the infrapolitical turn in art and curating in a post-financialised world. One strand explored speculative worldmaking practices and leveraging – highlighting subtle shifts from more symbolic forms of ‘imagining otherwise’ to forms of performing and actioning desired worlds, and their translation into organisational processes. Building on this, the talk asks if the expansion of the field into practices of leveraging can address the social phenomenon of indifference. Often mistaken for the subjective feeling of apathy, indifference is better understood as an (infra)structurally induced condition resistant to simple antidotes such as ‘caring more’. Contemporary examples from statecraft reliant on rapid, financialised urbanisation and mega-infrastructure projects – such as Egypt’s – show how indifference is produced through capitalisation-as-worldbuilding. Such worldbuilding generates a ‘strange progress’ bound to a financial temporality in which (ecological) collapse and urban bloom coexist in close proximity. Since – as Leigh Claire La Berge puts it – we “cannot get outside of a leverage world”, can these forms of macroscale leveraged worldbuilding help elucidate our commitments and suggest some limits and possibilities of/for leveraging?
Bassam El Baroni is a curator, writer, and associate professor in curating and mediating art at Aalto University, Finland. His work explores the intersections of art & curatorial practice, technology, political economy, and activism. Key curatorial projects include Infrahauntologies (Oldenburg, DE & Bourges FR, 2021–2022), What Hope Looks Like After Hope (Home Works 7, Beirut, 2015), Agitationism (Eva International – Ireland’s Biennial, 2014), and Manifesta 8 (Murcia, 2010–2011, co-curator). Recent publications include Between the Material and the Possible: Infrastructural Re-examination and Speculation in Art (editor, Sternberg, 2022).

TOON FIBBE
Too Big to Fail, Too Small to Notice

Too big to fail, too small to notice is a series of works sparked by a small article I found in the newspaper archive of the Wall Street Journal. The article described stock-market traders in Chicago who had begun to wear platform heels at the end of the 1990s – a time when financial trading was yet to be digitised and the trading floors were crowded by shouting, wildly gesticulating macho men.
Tallness mattered in this environment, for the taller you were, the more visible – and the more visible you were… the faster you could trade. Platform heels therefore conveniently elevated a trader above the rest. Yet as more and more traders began to wear these heels, the initial advantage disappeared, spurring the traders to wear increasingly higher and higher heels. The heels eventually became so high, that accidents started to happen and the Chicago Board of Trade had to regulate the maximum heel-size to two inches.
Toon Fibbe is a time-traveling cartographer of invisible economies, born on a distant planet where currency is made of laughter and bureaucracy is run by sentient clouds. His studio floats between dimensions and is usually powered by the collective sighs of overworked office workers.

FRITZ-JULIUS GRAFE
Urban Visions of Global Climate Finance: Indian cities and the making of Groy

Green, smart and climate-resilient cities have dominated imaginations of urban futures across the globe. Global climate finance (GCF) agendas have asserted themselves as the only imaginable pathway to achieve such futures in effective ways. Based on a research project in India and Mexico that examined current GCF interventions, this presentation examines the mechanisms of ‘futuring’ advanced in their practices and sketches the inherent imaginaries of a model future city. Borrowing from John Berger’s city of Troy, we call this imaginary city Groy. Groy is a metaphor for green growth; it is the World Bank’s fantasy project: a techno-capitalist vision of prosperity, the bank’s donor darling and its best practice case. In rendering this fantasy into a fictional city, we explore how future visions of urban GCF initiatives shape cities today to allow for a sustained critique of that future and, in consequence, a rethinking of present times. The presentation outlines frictions between this vision of Groy and the challenges on the ground in Indian cities today, and how conflicts over the question of value plant the seed of a growing division.
Fritz-Julius Grafe is a Post-Doctoral Researcher in the Unit for Social and Cultural Geography at the University of Zurich. He holds a PhD in Geography from the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin and is a co-convener of the UrbanCliFi Network. He has worked extensively on the financialization of Water Infrastructure in both British and Indian contexts and has explored related questions for the European Commission regarding the precautionary principle for sustainable urban development under climate change. His current work focusses on the urbanization of climate finance.

FELIX KRÄMER
Debt’s Debt: A Body History of Inequality after the End of Slavery to the Present in the United States

„It didn’t look like she was any freer after freedom“ – this is how 82-year-old Robert Lofton from Arkansas recalled his mother’s situation after emancipation when interviewed in the second half of the 1930s. This presentation argues that his impression was due to the particular politics surrounding debt that evolved from the moral and economic debt cut for white former enslavers at the expense of African Americans in general and Black women in particular. I will introduce and discuss the argument that debt’s debt (Schuldenschuld) is at work genealogically and a debt difference (Schuldendifferenz) structured US society on this basis repeatedly synchronically. From sharecropping to the expanding system of convict leasing practices which emerged after the civil war, this paper traces indebtedness as a means to structure society and risk separately and unequally including New Deal mortgage politics, redlining practices, and present-day police violence. The history of indebtedness scrutinizes the ways in which whiteness as property is obscured by debt relations, criminalization discourses, and -practices.
Felix Krämer studied History, Political Science and Gender Studies in Hamburg, received a PhD in Münster, had been working at the Grad-School Dynamics of Space and Gender in Kassel and Göttingen, and teaches at the Department of History in Erfurt. He is supervising a subproject of the Collaborative Research Center Structural Change of Property and his research interests include the new history of capitalism, gender and body history, the history of religion and media theory. His second book Leben auf Kredit focuses on the history of debt, precarity, and difference in the US from the end of slavery to the present.

IBRAHIM KOMBARJI
Slicing the Cake: On Lebanon’s Economy of Exhaustion

Lebanon’s $103.54 billion public debt is not just a financial condition—it is an architectural system that organizes space, behavior, and governance. This lecture approaches Lebanon’s crisis-as-usual economy through material culture, reading debt as a spatial infrastructure rather than an abstract burden. From the shrinking banknote to the toy gun used in civilian bank raids, from elastic-bound stacks of cash to the marble facade of the Central Bank, these objects are not metaphors—they are mechanisms. They mediate access, choreograph resistance, and embody an “economy of exhaustion” where resilience and disobedience cohabit. Unlike debt regimes anchored in industrial productivity or monetary policy, Lebanon’s is propped up by post-war reconstruction failures, informal financial circuits, and clientelist entanglements. This talk considers how debt is absorbed rather than repaid—turned into architecture, atmospheres, and habits of survival—and how its absurd logics are both contested and sustained through the very materials that render them legible.
Ibrahim Kombarji is an architect, researcher, and writer based in New York. His work examines the entanglements of architecture, ecology, and geopolitics, focusing on how spatial practices reveal material cultures, geographies of crisis, and infrastructures of care. He will join the faculty of Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation (GSAPP) in 2026. His writing has appeared in PIN–UP Magazine, Errant Journal, Humboldt Books, Room 1000, and Bartlett’s Prospectives Journal. Previously based in Milan, he was a long-time collaborator of Formafantasma, leading projects for La Biennale di Venezia, Prada, and the UNESCO Pearling Path. He has recently worked with Centro Pecci, Maharam, and Pioneer Works, and continues to anchor parts of his practice in Beirut.

ISABELL LOREY
Precarization, Care, and Queer Debt – How to Rethink Democracy

Under neoliberalism, precarization, the insecurity of work and life, has become normal for many people. The pandemic has exacerbated this trend. There are fewer and fewer permanent jobs, project-based employment and „jobs on demand“ continue to increase. For decades, social security has been shifting to the individual’s own responsibility. Debt has also become normal. When less and less can be planned, how does debt sustain the future and imprison the present? How do we become precarious and governable by debt? And how can debt relations be turned around? How do social debt relations become care relations? What might a different democratic coexistence look like, one based on care and mutual connectedness – a democracy Lorey calls presentist democracy? What does this mean for emancipation and the affirmation of precariousness?
Isabell Lorey is a political theorist and holds the professorship for Queer Studies in Science and the Arts at the Academy of Media Arts Cologne. She is a publisher and co-editor of the experimental publication platform transversal.at of the European Institute for Progressive Cultural Policies (eipcp). She habilitated in political science at the University of Vienna and has taught at various international universities. She was a member of the feminist activist group ‚kleines postfordistisches Drama‘ (kpD). Between 1987 and 2000, she worked as an editor and filmmaker for ARD and ZDF, in particular for logo!, the daily news program for children. Her books include: Figuren des Immunen (Zurich 2011); Immer Ärger mit dem Subjekt (Vienna et al. 2017); State of Insecurity. Government of the Precarious (London 2015); Democracy in the Political Present. A Queer-feminist Theory (London 2022).

*Prekarisierung, Sorge und queere Schulden – Wie wir Demokratie neu denken können
Prekarisierung, die Unsicherheit von Arbeit und Leben, ist im Neoliberalismus für viele normal geworden. Es gibt immer weniger feste Arbeitsplätze, projektbasierte Beschäftigung und „Jobs auf Abruf“ nehmen weiter zu. Seit Jahrzehnten verlagert sich die soziale Sicherheit in die Eigenverantwortung des Einzelnen. Auch Verschuldung ist normal geworden. Wenn immer weniger planbar ist, kann Verschuldung dann tatsächlich die Zukunft sichern, oder engt sie vor allem die Gegenwart ein? Wie werden wir durch Schulden prekär und regierbar? Und wie können Schuldverhältnisse umgekehrt werden? Wie werden aus sozialen Schuldverhältnissen Sorgebeziehungen? Wie könnte ein anderes demokratisches Zusammenleben aussehen, das auf Sorge und gegenseitiger Verbundenheit beruht – eine Demokratie, die Lorey als präsentische Demokratie bezeichnet? Was bedeutet das für die Emanzipation und die Affirmation des Prekärsein?
Isabell Lorey ist politische Theoretikerin und hat die Professur für Queer Studies in Wissenschaft und Künsten an der Kunsthochschule für Medien Köln inne. Sie ist Verlegerin und Mitherausgeberin der experimentellen Publikationsplattform transversal.at des European Institute for Progressive Cultural Policies (eipcp). Sie wurde an der Universität Wien in Politikwissenschaft habilitiert und hat an verschiedenen internationalen Universitäten unterrichtet. Sie war Mitglied der feministisch-aktivistischen Gruppe ‚kleines postfordistisches Drama‘ (kpD). Zwischen 1987-2000 arbeitete sie als Redakteurin und Filmemacherin für ARD und ZDF, vor allem für logo!, die tägliche Nachrichtensendung für Kinder. Zu ihren Buchveröffentlichungen gehören: Figuren des Immunen (Zürich 2011); Immer Ärger mit dem Subjekt (Wien u.a.2017); Die Regierung der Prekären (Wien 2012/2020); Demokratie im Präsens. Eine Theorie der politischen Gegenwart (Berlin 2020).

VASNA RAMASAR

In this presentation, I will approach the question of debt from the perspective of climate justice. Currently there is a focus on reducing our carbon emissions so that we can maintain a livable climate for life on planet earth. However, a narrow focus on greenhouse gas emissions and climate change is insufficient. Our efforts to address climate change must be done in the context of historical, present and future social and ecological relations. While we work to abolish fossil fuels; we also need to abolish the unjust system of uneven development and racialized capitalism that has developed with it. Bringing an analysis of climate debt has the potential to reshape our imaginaries, political relations and understanding of responsibility, accountability and justice. I will explore the concept of ecological debt, what it means for decolonizing climate justice and how the arts have a role in opening up our imaginaries to connect to different lived experiences of climate debt.
Dr Vasna Ramasar is an Associate Professor at the Division of Human Ecology, Lund University and Director of the Masters Programme on Culture, Power and Sustainability. She focuses on feminist and decolonial approaches to social and environmental justice and finding alternatives to the current destructive development paradigms through research, teaching, activism and artistic practice. Her current research focuses on just transitions; workers as agents of change in green transitions and women’s resistance to extractivism. She is additionally a founding member of the Global Tapestry of Alternatives, the Collective Against Environmental Racism in Denmark, part of Post Extractive Futures, and on the steering committee for Women Against Destructive Extractivism in Africa. https://www.keg.lu.se/en/vasna-ramasar

CHRISTOPH SORG
„You are not a loan“ – The history and present of debt abolitionist movements

It would have been hard to miss the pivotal role debt has played for contentious politics in the last decades. The North Atlantic Financial Crisis, Global Recession and European Debt Crisis – as well as the recent waves of protest that followed them – have catapulted debt politics into the limelight of public debates. Based on a review of historical case studies and fieldwork in North Africa, the US and Europe, Christoph Sorg presents lineages of revolt against debt from the 1970s to the 2010s. In doing so he examines how both debt-mediated expropriation and resistance to it have transformed over time.
Christoph Sorg is a social scientist at Humboldt University Berlin. His work focuses on non-economistic and non-class-reductionist theories of capitalism and post-capitalism, social movements and democratic planning. He has spent several years studying (and participating in) debt abolitionist movements during his PhD. He has since started to study the democratization of finance and the socialization of investment as structural fixes for debt-based inequality.