I went to London zoo to participate in an extension of an exhibition and conference. The exhibition at Gasworks was Hydrarchy: Power and Resistance at Sea, which explores contemporary conceptions of the sea as a contested cultural, political, legal and socio-economic territory.

The artists in Hydrarchy: Power and Resistance at Sea explore themes of colonialism and the slave trade, commerce, tourism and offshore finance, as well as maritime folk history, piracy and the tyrannical figure of the captain.

Saturday 18th September 2010

Unfortunately I missed the conference, although clearly it was exploring some of the theoretical terrain suggested by the exhibition. The sea has functioned as a historic space for the exercise of violent, tyrannical and world-transforming power; like capitalism, empire, slavery, etc. On the other hand the sea offers a possibility of resistance, where alternative, sometimes revolutionary social orders can be imagined and practiced; pirates, mutinies, offshore finance, etc.....

"We have to discuss speculation, because the ultimate test is not the probable, but the possible. The possible implies creation, and obliges us to move beyond the probable."

Isabelle Stengers, Cosmopolitiques review

Capital is being screened as part of Backsourcing: a film program Video Lounge selected by Vincent Meessen, at the Chinese European Art Center (CEAC), Xiamen University, China, Dec 18-Jan 17, 2010.

In the world of enterprise, outsourcing delegates tasks that are no longer seen as profitable, or no longer core to a company's business, to an exterior contractor. Outsourcing enables a company to concentrate elsewhere, by diffusing risks, investments and costs to others.  The  recent economic collapse has necessitated ‘backsourcing’, when previously outsourced processes have had to be reappropriated.

 “We must try to avoid a vicious circle on which tighter liquidity conditions, lower asset values, impaired capital resources, reduced credit supply and slower aggregate demand feedback on each other.”

I read this quote, a beautifully succinct piece of prose in a paper produced by Paul Tucker, Executive Director and Money Policy Committee Member of the Bank of England, for the Institutional Money Market Funds Association Annual Dinner, in April 2008.

I was researching Auction Houses at the time and trying to keep an eye on financial markets. Of course we have not avoided the vicious circle, in fact we seem to be spiraling into a terrible black vortex.

“One hand, one million dollars, no tears.”

Is the McGuffin or plot device that motivates Liar's Poker by Michael Lewis, which I'm reading at the moment. Its an insiders account of the deregulation of the American Mortgage markets in the 1980's and the beginning of the havoc that CDO's and contempt, are visiting upon us now. Liar's Poker was presented in the 1990's as humorous, now it reads as a tragedy; Marx reversed.