Please enjoy a few short, weird films about economics, made by artists to challenge our assumptions
from “Logorama”
Roaming around to conclude the week, we have retrieved a fascinating page from a festival from last year, Economia (“a festival about the economy without economists”) in Eindhoven, reported on by the We Make Money Not Art blog. They explain their approach here:
Since the outbreak of the financial crises in 2007/2008, uncertainty about the effectiveness and validity of the neoliberal model increased considerably. Economics, as a social technology in its present form, provides no solution to issues of climate change and social inequality. It cannot help us organize social alliances, public interests or develop long-term prospects. Its results no longer appeal. The added value of efficiency and productivity are outweighed by the numerous disadvantages of reducing all values to market value.
Although we see a growing number of critical views on the neoliberal model, no new answers or alternatives have been proposed yet. In the search of new economic insights and alternatives to the current model, why not start by treating economics like any other technology? Play with it, hacking it, use input from other disciplines, unleashing science fiction on it, approach it in an artistic manner. In short, taking ownership so that we can reshape and rework economics as we see fit. With Economia we are going to do precisely that!
The programme was very exciting - and we’d love to see the festival happen again. But in the meantime, it’s a delight to show you some clips from their film festival, all based on material we can show you here, without copyright constraint.
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The great Hungarian director Bela Tarr made a short film about Europe in 2004, “Prologue”:
A relentless animation about a world made entirely of corporate logos - and what happens when disaster visits it: Logorama
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“Before the Nation Went Bankrupt” tells the story of the 2008 financial crisis through the fictional love letters of JP Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon. The video is in part an alternative and more libidinal history of our current financial crisis, and an exploration of the metaphoric creep of the neoliberal ideology into all areas of life. Not quite fiction and not quite satire, the letters are a cry in the dark from an insular world that brought us all to the brink of financial, physical and moral ruin.”