Description:
<jats:title>Abstract</jats:title>
<jats:p>This article examines how artists, activism, and works of art may
contribute to a more textured understanding of debt in contemporary society
and culture. The diversity of aesthetic practices and range of strategic
interventions in which artists are organizers and activists are manifest in
the Global Ultra Luxury Faction (G.U.L.F.), advocacy initiatives by Working
Artists and the Greater Economy (W.A.G.E.), and alternative, trans-local
projects such as the Arts Collaboratory. These activist interventions
provide the context for an examination of how artists have seized upon
discourses related to debt and finance to produce works that offer a
critical reappraisal of the global economy. Artists’ projects by Martha
Rosler, Cassie Thornton, Zachary Formwalt, and Michael Najjar challenge
audiences to rethink the invisible networks of debt and exchange by creating
new visual vocabularies for ‘seeing’ debt. The emergence of activist groups,
such as Liberate Tate, has also signaled renewed interest in the ethics of
corporate sponsorships, museums, and environmental issues. A heightened
awareness of the ethical dimensions of debt and global support for activist
movements may contribute to new notions of citizenship and performative
democracy that can incite individual and collective renegotiations of how we
might critically rethink debt.</jats:p>