Published Date 12/11/14 5:53 PM
I went to a workshop at Space Studios on digital money and the arts. What follows are my notes – not a summary of the event so much as the threads it pulled for me, and the questions it raised.
Forms of money
There are multiple forms of money in circulation, each serving different social logics:
- LETS (Local Exchange Trading Systems): These tend to work for liberals and localists. The Brixton Pound, discussed at the meeting, is a current example.
- Digital money: This works first for geeks, then for capital. Bitcoin and its endless clones follow this familiar trajectory.
- Gift economies: These work for communities. Examples include London boaters and the Rainbow Gathering -both long-running, functional systems built on trust and reciprocity.
- £££ (state money): This works for the state, and therefore for capital. This is the dominant system we currently live under.
- Flatter: A potential path toward a practical digital utopia. (Needs more concrete examples, but the intent is important.)
Key problem: endless reinvention
The core point I wanted to get across is simple but routinely ignored: Don’t – repeat – use existing projects. Instead, everyone reinvents the wheel. We end up with hundreds of implementations of the same limited, fashionable ideas, none of them federated, none of them interoperable. Value is lost in the mess. Then the cycle repeats: rinse, repeat, move on. It’s both sad and destructive.
Space, power, and arrogance
There’s also the issue of arrogance: who is pushing whom out? Space itself has value, and control of space is control of meaning. Capital markets must expand or die. As a result, the things we value are constantly being consumed. This is colonisation of alternatives. Gentrification isn’t just about housing, its tentacles reach into every cultural and social space.
Money and social change
The world used to be regulated, in very different ways. After the fall of the Soviet Union, ripped-up money lay like confetti in public parks. Old systems collapsed overnight, replaced by temporary currencies. This transition shows something crucial: to change society, you have to change the money.
Art, value, and gatekeeping
Artists talk about reshaping the world, but what does that actually mean? What is art, and what is tart? The “chattering classes” – are they parasites, or do they have value? Are they vampires, or are they simply articulators of exclusivity? Who is curating the conversation, and to what end? What outcomes are actually produced?
And the deeper question underneath all this: where does value come from?
Community vs capital
Take the Rainbow Gathering as an example:
* Gift-based
* Global
* Nomadic
* Decentralised
* Reproduced again and again, everywhere, without ownership or branding
This raises a fundamental divide:
* Are you focused on community or on capital?
* Are you making for yourself, or for others?
* Is the work abstract, or is it useful?
* Does it live inside the art world, or outside it – in the space of use?
Many people are alienated from the establishment by gatekeepers who control access, legitimacy, and funding.
Attention, federation, and resistance
Attention is a currency. If we decentralise it, hierarchies will begin to crumble – not completely, but meaningfully. Bravely independent projects matter, but federation is the real solution.
And we must actively resist the colonisation of alternatives. Capital markets will always try to absorb what threatens them. Gentrification is ripe, aggressive, and ongoing, unless we build systems that are harder to capture.
