Vermeir & Heiremans are participating in the 11th Critical Finance Studies Conference at the University of Birmingham with a lecture and a screening of A Modest Proposal.
07 – 09/08/2019
Vermeir & Heiremans’ film A Modest Proposal (in a Black Box) investigates if and how financialisation can be repurposed towards a more equitable model. The proposal suggests that through the financialisation of public art collections and/or museum real estate, a cycle of wealth can be created to also benefit its original stakeholders: the artists and art workers. With its punning title, the film questions if returns on public assets can be channeled directly into art institutions and art workers, and benefit a specific group, or if they, on the other hand, should be re-directed back into the public purse, for its use to be determined by democratic processes?
11th Critical Finance Studies Conference
Alan Walters Building – University of Birmingham
Edgbaston
Birmingham B15 2TT, UK
07 – 09/08/2019
It is the place of the Critical Finance Studies conference to encourage a wide range of critical and creative ways of engaging with finance. Studying finance critically is about risking one’s self in the course of producing radically novel ways of thinking and comprehending finance and, ultimately, of creating new possibilities of life.
This year the conference will focus on Finance and the Environment, given the urgency of all issues concerning our planet’s habitability for humans and other species. At the same time the environmental crisis is also an economic, political and social crisis for many across the planet, in the present as well as the future. Both these agendas require innovative ways of thinking and acting about finance, whether in conventional areas such as banking, regulation, governance, and the “high finance” of the financial markets, or less explored areas such as finance in the arts and in popular culture. It also requires innovative practical ways of addressing both old and new problems.