Art After Money, Money After Art ― Creative Strategies Against Financialization

We like to imagine that money and art are old enemies, but beneath the veneer of creative utopianism is a dark capitalist underbelly. To expose the fraught intersection of art and money, Max Haiven proposes we examine how money is mobilized in art.
Even as he shows how imaginary money and the so-called “creative economy” extract an artist’s potential, Haiven identifies and assesses a range of creative strategies for mocking, decrypting, hacking, sabotaging, and exiting capitalism through art. Focusing on the ways contemporary artists understand, imagine, and contend with material and immaterial forms of cash, debt, and credit, Haiven reveals the potential for creativity and resistance in a world dominated by financialization.
Written for artists, activists, and scholars, this book takes seriously the need to understand and resist capitalism in an age of corporate abuse and exploitation.

Max Haiven is assistant professor and Canada Research Chair in Culture, Media, and Social Justice at Lakehead University and director of the ReImagining Value Action Lab. His books include, most recently, The Radical Imagination and Cultures of Financialization.