Disenchanting the Mysteries of Digital Money is an evening of artistic exploration and practice-based research by two talented Bristol-based artists and PhD candidates.

Attend 1 or both events. No-one denied a ticket through lack of funds.

7-8pm: MONEY PIPE with Richard Broomhall
An online performance lecture telling the stories of the fibre optic cables - rivers of light - that circumnavigate the planet and enter the UK beneath Brean and Berrow’s beaches.

8.30pm-9.15pm BREAKING THE SPELL OF FINANCIALISATION with Lara Luna Bartley
A participatory ritual to break the spell of financialisation on transaction data. (Limited places available)

-- Further Details --

Money Pipe: 7pm - 8pm
£7 / £5 Conc. / Pay-what-you-feel

Project Express – Hibernia Express – GTT Express - ???

These are the names that the fastest fibre optic link between the London and New York stock exchanges has been known by.

The cable formerly known as GTT Express enters the silt and salt of the Severn Estuary at the small coastal resort of Brean Sands, Somerset. It has been claimed that this sub sea fibre optic cable can contribute in excess of £30 billion to the annual economy of the UK. However, no corporation has owned it for longer than 2yrs, every owner has run into heavy arrears and been forced to sell this apparently gleaming asset to clear their debts. Even its planning, fabrication and installation were fought over by transnational corporations; with their political lobbyists raising the spectres of national security fears to influence the procurement processes.

500m down the beach from fka GTT Express’s landfall another 2 cables, part of a ring of fibre optic cable that circumnavigate the planet, also enter the sand and silt. Powering these 2 cables uses the same amount of energy as a small town. Globally there are in excess of 430 currently operational subsea fibre optic cables. Planetary scale computation has one helluva carbon habit.

This online performance lecture will tell the stories of the rivers of light beneath Brean and Berrow’s beaches.

Richard Broomhall - Biography

Richard Broomhall makes films and installations, is a 3d3 doctoral researcher and one facet of Back in 5 Squad. He is based in Bristol. His doctoral research project, Clouded Glass and a Politics of Light: Critical Network Materialities, uses film and installation making to explore the political economy & environmental impacts of transnational data network infrastructure in the southwest UK. Richard is committed to publicly owned, democratically governed and operated carbon neutral network infrastructure. We can and must collectively build new, equitable worlds inside the failing shell of the old. Imagining these new worlds is a vital first step.

His film Got You Mouse won the Peninsula Arts Film Commission Prize 2018 and his works have screened & exhibited nationally and internationally including Stuttgarter FilmWinter, dokumentArt – European Film Festival for Documentaries, Baltic 39 and BBC 1.

http://www.fracturedether.co.uk/

-

Breaking the Spell of Financialisation: 8.30pm - 9.15pm
£7 / £5 Conc. / Pay-what-you-feel (Limited places available)

You are invited to take part in a ritual to break the spell of financialisation on transaction data.

Most transactions used to take place in cash, and only you and the person you bought from had that information. Nowadays, most transactions are digital and banks are keeping records of everything we buy and monetizing that data ie. transaction data is being sold to third parties.

Inspired by the work of Brussels based collective Desorceler la Finance (Unbewitch Finance), this participatory performance employs visualisation, spell-writing and charms, in an attempt to protect our data. Sign up to take part.

Lara Luna Bartley - Biography

Lara Luna Bartley is an artist and PhD candidate at the University of the West of England's Digital Culture Research Centre (DCRC), focused on engaging audiences in debate about the monetary, banking and financial system through participatory art. Recent works include: the Autonomous Teller Machine (2018), a confused ATM activated through the insertion of a bank card which quizzed audiences about the 2008 financial crisis via a receipt printer; I-D coin (2018), a speculative design film short listed for the Future of Money Award; and BankRUN (2017), a self-standing ATM from which 200 hand-printed banknotes were dispensed creating a 'bank run'.

www.laralunabartley.com

Entry requirements: — Read more — Read less