In this talk, Max Haiven discusses the threads that connect his last book Art After Money, Money After Art: Creative Strategies Against Financialization (2018) with his newly released Revenge Capitalism: The Ghosts of Empire, the Demons of Capital, and the Settling of Unpayable Debts (May 2020).

He takes up the condition of living in a world defined by the imposition of "unpayable debts from above" that act vengefully on people and nations and the potential for claiming "unpayable debts from below." Arguing that such unpayable debts dare not speak their true name in the realms of politics, law and economics, he suggests that this strange and complicit thing we call "art" may have something unique and powerful to offer in the months and years to come.

Biography

Max Haiven is Canada Research Chair in Culture, Media and Social Justice at Lakehead University in Northwest Ontario and director of the ReImagining Value Action Lab (RiVAL).

He writes articles for both academic and general audiences and is the author of the books Crises of Imagination, Crises of Power: Capitalism, Creativity and the Commons (2014), The Radical Imagination: Social Movement Research in the Age of Austerity (with Alex Khasnabish, 2014) and Cultures of Financialization: Fictitious Capital in Popular Culture and Everyday Life (2014).

His latest book, Art after Money, Money after Art: Creative Strategies Against Financialization, was published by Pluto in Fall 2018. His book Revenge Capitalism: The Ghosts of Empire, the Demons of Capital, and the Settling of Unpayable Debts will appear in May 2020.

Watch

The video of this lecture is available on UCL Media Central.