The Museum of Debt is planning a month long pop-up exhibition to be held at an undisclosed location in Canary Wharf, Isle of Dogs, London’s shining capitalist out-growth.
Ten years ago, David Graeber pointed out that we’re confused about debt. What it is and what to do about it. The Museum of Debt aims to help us understand debt from an anthropological, etymological, psychological and social perspective. The museum will feature artifacts and documents which explore the many dimensions of debt. From its origins as relations between people, the network of obligations that bound communities together to the impersonal and exploitative burden it has become.
We want to hear what artists have to say about this change. There is no fee for submissions and the best will feature on the Museum’s online gallery and if selected may feature in the exhibition itself.
You can submit existing work or propose new work. However, no funding is available for the production of new work. It can be in any media – digital, 2D, 3D or other. It can be written word, spoken word, video, sound, drawing, painting, sculpture, performance…anything. You can submit your own response to debt as an issue or experience, but we would particularly like to receive submissions that respond to the following statement.
5000 years of debt: How we took ‘Thank you’ and turned it into ‘Screw You’.
Further Information
A central theme of David Graeber’s analysis is that we are confused about debt, and that without greater clarity about debt we are unlikely to find the right solution. Graeber proposed a new way of thinking about debt in terms of three modes of exchange: communism (from each according to his ability, to each according to his need); direct exchange (between a creditor and a debtor, entered into on the basis of equality and volition); and hierarchy (relations between people where there is no equality and an uneven distribution of power). This suggests that problems are likely to arise at the boundaries between these modes. Importantly his work suggests that the moral confusion we suffer is likely to mean we are unable to solve these problems without greater thought. He believed that it was time for the debt relationships between people in society to be fundamentally renegotiated. This means taking an objective look at the facts. Considering the problem from more than one perspective.
The Museum of Debt wants to contribute to this renegotiation by providing access to, and insights about, some of the material and ideas discussed in Graeber’s book. It aims to do this in a provocative way using humour and satire rather than data and polemics. It aims to provide an artistic, absurdist and anarchic take on the question of debt.
The team behind the museum have previously delivered numerous visitor experiences including Circus of the Mind (a three ringed circus featuring metaphysical betting, a court of moral ambiguity and a confessional for modern (cognitive) sins) and Cornershop (an apocalyptic version of the traditional British corner shop where nothing is quite what it seems).
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