Usufructuaries of earth, Propositions 1 “Beyond Value” and 2 “Taking Debt Out of the Closet”

Usufructuaries of earth, Propositions 1 “Beyond Value” and 2 “Taking Debt Out of the Closet” and Plenary
25 May 2024
PROPOSITION 1
Beyond Value
Denise Ferreira da Silva (online) and Massimiliano (Mao) Mollona Asia Bazdyrieva , Lama El Khatib, Ola Hassanain, Louis Henderson, Hanna Husberg, Mokia Laisin (cultural worker, Berlin), Marie Louise Richards, Dina Mohamed, Nina Støttrup Larsen

This proposition brings forward a working critique of value through the lens of Black feminist aesthetics and radical political economies. How can value be reconceived as a gathering of matter that resists containment, capture, and possession—as a reclamation of an aesthetics of matter that takes opacity, relationality, and hapticality as its starting point?

PROPOSITION 2
Taking Debt Out of the Closet
Verónica Gago (online) and Lucí Cavallero*

Disclosing how neoliberal finance exploits domestic and care labor and other forms of social reproduction, this proposition builds on feminist solidarities to articulate a collective political grammar against the invasion of debt in everyday life.

PLENARY: PROPOSITIONS 1 and 2*
Lucí Cavallero, Clara Balaguer, Marion Jangli, Massimiliano (Mao) Mollona, and Ola Hassanain, moderated by Lama El Khatib and Iliada Charlambous

Convention, chapter three of Usufructuaries of earth, has been conceptualized by artist and researcher Marwa Arsanios and BAK convener of research and publications Wietske Maas in dialogue with BAK coordinator of research and publications Alexandra Martens Serrano, the BAK team, and all convention contributors. Video editing by Geo Barcan.