The aim of our contribution is to perform a series of experiments with artistic research that we developed on the intersection between economics, critical theory and philosophy of science over the last ten years. AR was used both as a mirror where the reflections of each of the disciplines was projected onto the others, as well as a hammer to destroy the incommensurabilities of signs, liberating the meanings from their fixed position on the signifying chain of neoliberal ideology. After re-enacting some of these experiments with the audience and describing other, we would like to open up a discussion on the effect that AR can potentially have on mainstream economic discourse and the epistemic status of its findings drawing also from work of other artists-researchers in the field.   

The motivation of our engagement with artistic research was a reaction to the financial meltdown of 2009. Realizing the limitations of both scientific and epistemological critiques of economic discourse we developed a multitude of apparatuses comprised of both linguistic and non-linguistic elements (gestures, graphemes, illustrations, movements, sounds) as an act of decoding economics by actualizing and materializing its symbols; be it letters, words, numbers, mathematical equations or diagrams. Decoding was often followed by a re-coding of economic narratives through performance, poetry, fiction and visual art. Our method combines artistic research and artistic critique, trying to develop an alternative to the economic orthodoxy from within the very discourse of 'scientific' economics. So far artists have addressed the market ideology by pointing to the apparent contradictions of economic reasoning; we will develop a literal(ly) analysis with the aim to short circuit, accelerate and cut-up the circulation of meaning in the economy, and consequently the circulation of value, through epistemic apparatuses and experimental systems.

Co Authors Jack Fisher & Carsten Lisecki.