
The renewed prevalence of debt in political discourse accounts to significant shifts in global power dynamics and environmental conditions, while regimes of compulsory growth claim borrowed funds as a prerequisite for sustained production in postindustrial societies. This indicates an extension, if not an escalation, of the analogy between artistic practice and a financialized present outlined by Marina Vishmidt and others in the notion of speculation. Yet once the stakes are exhausted, it goes into debt.
Following Leigh Claire LaBerge’s proposition that there is “no more abstraction,” the symposium consequently explores the social and cultural productivity of debt. “Bodies,” “Ecologies,” and “Infrastructures” provides instances for situated analyses of how property, value, and interest as structures of both debt and art since the becoming of modernity unfold in a speculative contemporary. Instead of explanatory containment, the aim is to contribute to an extended understanding of debt as a formative framework of computational actualities.
Abstracts & Biographies of the speakers here
Program
Thursday, 22.05.2025
19:00 Precarization, Care, and Queer Debt – How to Rethink Democracy ISABELL LOREY (Cologne)
Opening Lecture
German / simultaneous interpretation to English)
Drinks & Communal Dinner
Freitag, 23.05.2025
10:00 Welcome and Introduction SUSANNE HUBER (Bremen)
10:15 PROPERTY: Corporeal Charge and Embodied Unownership
Moderator: Susanne Huber
Debt’s Debt: A Body History of Inequality after the End of Slavery to the Present in the United States FELIX KRÄMER (Erfurt)
The Birth of Debt from the Nature of Value – and a trans lesbian response LUCE deLIRE (Berlin)
Too Big To Fail, Too Small To Notice TOON FIBBE (Rotterdam/Brussels)
Performance
Lunch Break
13:30 VALUE: Ecologies in Measure and Scale
Moderator: Friederike Nastold
The Past is in Front of You: Thinking Climate Justice through Debt VASNA RAMASAR (Lund)
Urban Visions of Global Climate Finance: Indian cities and the making of Groy FRITZ-JULIUS GRAFE (Zurich)
Coffee Break
15:45 INTEREST: Infrastructures of Expansion
Moderator: Daniel Berndt
Slicing the Cake: On Lebanon’s Economy of Exhaustion IBRAHIM KOMBARJI (New York/Beirut) – digital
Strange Progress: Financial Temporality and the Problem of Indifference BASSAM EL BARONI (Espoo)
________ Break
18:00 ACTIVISM: Connectivity and Collectivity
Moderator: Annette Hans
Transfeminist Struggles against Financial Authoritarianism LUCÍA CAVALLERO (Buenos Aires) – digital
“You are not a loan” – The history and present of debt abolitionist movements CHRISTOPH SORG (Berlin)
Thu, 22.05. 19:00
Fri, 23.05. 10:00–20:00
An initiative by Universität Bremen and GAK Gesellschaft für aktuelle Kunst Bremen, in cooperation with Carl von Ossietzky Universität Oldenburg and Hochschule für Künste Bremen, Klasse Temporary Spaces
Speakers
with Lucía Cavallero, Luce deLire, Bassam El Baroni, Toon Fibbe, Fritz-Julius Grafe, Ibrahim Kombarji, Felix Krämer, Isabell Lorey, Vasna Ramasar, Christoph Sorg
spatial activation by Temporary Spaces (Class Asli Serbest, HfK Bremen): Sara Ahmed Neyazy Khayry Elbarkouki, Vladislava Arzamastseva, Belenika Eichhorn, Johanna Hiege, Lea Jung, Jisu Kim, Keumjung Roh, Yoona Song, Yunda Suh, Vera Tolmatsova, Zeynep Yesilmaden, with support and contributions by Elizaveta Boucke, Seulwoo Choi, Robert Coellen, Sebastian Grundmüller, Shatw Gurji
Cooperation
The impact of debt on bodies, organisms, and relationships, as well as on environments and infrastructures, is often obscured by financial abstractions and moral charge. The group exhibition You Breath Differently Under the Weight. Schuld und Haben and the symposium DEBT. Unsettling Matters of Interest shift the perspective to a transdisciplinary exploration of how liabilities materialize, how they operate, and by which media and apparatuses.
Funding
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG)
Manfred und Ursula Fluß-Stiftung