Abstract

As part of the Liviana conference CPE would like to facilitate a collective discussion about the synergies between contemporary art and economic imagination by focusing on the exhibition "Economics the Blockbuster: It’s not Business as Usual". This ground-breaking show explores economics through contemporary art, and will be on view at The Whitworth (Manchester, UK) from 30 June – 22 October as part of Manchester International Festival. CPE partakes not only in setting the curatorial framework of the exhibition, it also facilitates a series of workshops dedicated to re-drawing the economy, and organises the central space of the exhibition. In general, the exhibition and accompanying live programme features a selection of extraordinary art projects, such as a community-led drinks company or an art collective reclaiming plantation land, that operate as real-world economic systems and include artist commissions, art as business, merchandise with a purpose, and workshops to reimagine and take back the economy. CPE would like to invite curators, artists, thinkers associated with the project, as much as the members of CERN and more broadly communities invested in contemporary art and economics to discuss their potential synergies, and to collectively learn from the project.