Works

Economic Fictions — We live with a myriad of powerful economic myths. The myths that…

We live with a myriad of powerful economic myths. The myths that history is progressive, and that nature is a resource to be mined and that greed is natural. The myths that liberal economics feeds democratic development, that the market will self-regulate, and that free trade is freedom. And the myth that we all compete on a level playing field. These myths often seem immutable, but in reality they are continuously modified, revised, and inverted depending on context. 

Economy is so shrouded in myths that an individual person’s place within financial systems becomes difficult to grasp. In response, many of us cycle through various ways of relating to economy. Our psychological reactions change continuously—even over the course of a day we might move from defiance to resignation to enthusiasm and back again. 

Interested in exploring this variety of responses, a number of SUPERFLEX works play with familiar narratives about economy. Strategies vary: the normal operation of transactions is suspended, symbols are misused or reinvented, or proposals for different economic strategies are modelled. But in all these works, economic myths are treated as unstable and flexible—as fictions that can be rewritten.