Catastrophe Time!
Catastrophe Time! by Gary Zhexi Zhang, published by MIT Press on September 5, 2023, is a thought-provoking collection of essays, fictions, and interviews that delve into the complex temporalities of finance and catastrophe. This 280-page volume examines how financial practitioners have evolved from traditional roles to modern-day trend forecasters and scenario planners, exploring the interplay between speculative knowledge and the volatile conditions of our planet.
In Catastrophe Time!, readers will encounter contributions from a diverse group of artists and researchers who investigate the transformative power of temporal technologies, such as currencies and simulation models. The book highlights how these practices can shape reality and challenge existing paradigms. By traversing the boundaries of rigorous research and speculative fiction, the contributors question the implications of their work in an increasingly unpredictable world, making this edition a significant exploration of economic history and conceptual art.
Official synopsis Publisher
A collection of essays, fictions, and interviews exploring the weird temporalities of finance and catastrophe.
Once, financial practitioners plied a hybrid trade as hydrologists, star-gazers, and weather-watchers who sought to discover the natural laws of value and exchange as they did the divine order of an unchanging nature. Today, corporate firms hire trend forecasters and scenario planners to play out strategic fictions in virtual worlds. Hurricane insurance markets simulate a turbulent climate to offer investment instruments to hedge against the risks of the stock market. And for financial astrologers operating in the city of London, celestial motions provide a cosmic map that orients the mood of terrestrial markets.
Bringing together artists, researchers, and interstitial practitioners, Catastrophe Time! pays attention to the conditions of speculative knowledge on an increasingly volatile planet. Traversing a gray zone between rigorous research and operative science fictions, its contributors question how practices of speculation may transform, undermine, and at times exceed, the worlds they set out to model.
Edited by artist Gary Zhexi Zhang, Catastrophe Time! explores the power of temporal technologies—whether currencies, conspiracies, or simulation models—to shape reality through fiction. By bringing together researchers and writers working at the boundaries of temporal practices, including Diann Bauer, Philip Grant, Bahar Noorizadeh, Habib William Kherbek, Klara Kofen, Kei Kreutler, Suhail Malik, Bassem Saad and Gordon Woo, this urgent volume seeks to make sense of the unraveling times in which we live.
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