By: Katherine Gibson; edited by Bonnie Fortune & Lise Skou
Copenhagen, Denmark: Trade Test Site Imprint, 2016
Pages: 20
Dimensions: 5 1/2” x 8 1/2”
Cover: softcover
Binding: staplebound
Process: offset
Color: full color
Edition Size: 500
ISBN: 978-87-999198-0-2

This publication is in Danish and English. 

This is #1 in the series described below:

Your Money or Your Life: Feminist Perspectives on Economy #1-4

Trade Test Site Imprint presents four new booklets by activist scholars and practicing artists. These four booklets explore creative responses to the oppressions of the dominant economic paradigm. They propose and document these responses. Katherine Gibson, political economist and feminist geographer based at the University of Western Sydney, describes different ways to understand and visualize the economy from a large and crumbling machine, to a floating iceberg (Book #1). Kathi Weeks, Women’s Studies professor at Duke University, asks what a guaranteed basic income might mean for waged work (Book #2). Kathrin Böhm, London-based artist and founding member of the collaborative Myvillages, documents her ongoing project Company: Movements, Deals, and Drinks (Book #3).  Böhm traces an interest in economic issues and alternative economies in her art work, discussing them in the context of a new project: a community-based beverage company. Artist and trader, Kate Rich, presents her ongoing project Feral Trade (Book #4). She writes, “Feral Trade is a grocery business, art endeavour, and long range economic experiment trading goods over social networks and outside commercial systems.”

These four books share, repeat, and reflect themes with each other. They each consider the flipside of the economy we live in. They question how global trade shapes daily, local relationships and what possibilities there might be to think about these influences differently. In the artists projects, Böhm and Rich, offer small scale alternatives and resistances to these global influences and pressures.  

This book series was originated with 2014 Trade Test Site seminar: ‘Hidden Economies: a seminar  on economic possibility.’ Significantly inspired by the work of J.K. Gibson-Graham, the pen name of Katherine Gibson and the late Julie Graham, the seminar sought to present how artists, activists, and scholars were resisting global capitalism and creating new economic realities. This, the resultant collection of essays and project documentation, is a meditation on how some scholars and artists are approaching ideas of economy in their work during the shifting period after the 2008 global crash. Conservative nationalism as a response to global capitalism was just beginning to rear its head as we put this series together. Now it is a daily reality in many places where these authors are based. There are many ways that we could respond to this time of great social, political, and economic upheaval these represent four possible frames.