Economics the Blockbuster: Online programme

It’s not Business as Usual

Experience videos and sound works included in the Economics the Blockbuster exhibition, from home or on the go. The programme includes works by The Alternative School of Economics (Ruth Beale and Amy Feneck), Tŷ Pawb and Goldin+Senneby. Economics the Blockbuster ran from 30 June to 22 October 2023.

Audio Guide for the Imagination, 2023

The Alternative School of Economics is a collaboration between artists Ruth Beale and Amy Feneck that questions dominant economic systems through collective self-education. Working with communities, they explore global political issues in relation to lived experience and use feminist and alternative economics as forms of resistance.

This series of audio guides is part of their new project The Neoliberal Imagination, which draws on the artists’ conversations with striking workers in Manchester to question how neoliberalism affects our everyday lives and our capacity to imagine our world anew. Neoliberalism is an economic philosophy that promotes free trade, deregulation, globalisation, and a reduction in government. 

The audio takes you through five situations, some every day, some fantastical. You are invited to use your imagination to explore neoliberal ideas such as individualism, monetisation, and choice.

The format of the audio guides was initially developed with the artist Marcus Coates for a workshop held during the DPE Roaming Symposium in 2021.

Tŷ Pawb on Film, 2023

Tŷ Pawb (Everyone’s House in Welsh) is a radical economic model of a public arts institution, combining markets, play and art in a creative and commercial ecosystem.

Located in the historic market city of Wrexham, Tŷ Pawb is home to a vibrant community of over 30 local businesses that occupy a central market and food court as part of an art gallery, residency studio, play space and community garden. Inspired by the concept of Arte Útil, art as a real-world activity that creates social change, Tŷ Pawb promotes art in an expanded form, where artists and traders work and learn together.

This film captures the everyday rhythm and atmosphere of Tŷ Pawb. It was proposed by stallholder Simon Morris, and includes interviews with: 

Liam Stokes-Massey, Pencilcraftsman Steve Tapp, Wrexham Trainer Revival Simon Morris, Personal Present People Rokaya Al Wahid, RTO Alterations. Amjid & Robina Hussain, Curry-on-the-Go Siwan Jones, Siop Siwan Niki Yeadon, Crystal Point Piercing Jay Davies, Wrexham playworker.

Directed and edited by Alec Boyd and Nuala Fowler, produced by Holly Shuttleworth and with additional sound by Jorge Walsh. Commissioned by the Whitworth with thanks to Tŷ Pawb and all the participants.

Behind the scenes: Quantitative Melencolia, 2023 Goldin+Senneby

In April 2022, the Whitworth’s impression of Melencolia I by Albrecht Dürer travelled to Hungary where it was scanned by leading banknote and security technology specialists Jura. The high-resolution microscopic scans captured exceptional detail, including paper fibres and the line depth of Dürer’s mark-making into the original copper printing plate. The image files were analysed by banknote engraver Gunnar Nehls, who subsequently digitally redrew the image line by line. The final digital image was then laser engraved by Jura and hand-finished by Nehls in his studio. The first series of impressions made from the replica plate were produced by master printer Siv Johansson in Sweden. They were hand-printed on a limited stock of 16th-century paper, sourced with advice from Angela Campbell, former Paper Conservator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. The scarce supply of the antique paper determined the limited number that could be made. Following on from Dürer’s title Melencolia I, the editions are titled Melencolia II, Melencolia III, Melencolia IV onwards.

Goldin+Senneby will use this plate to make a series of signed and numbered edition runs in collaboration with the Whitworth, to be sold to generate income for the gallery, activating the financial operation of the gallery collection.

The Neoliberal Imagination reading list

This reading list is compiled by the Alternative School of Economics on the occasion of a new exhibition at the Whitworth, Economics the Blockbuster: It’s not Business as Usual.

The Alternative School of Economics is a collaboration between artists Ruth Beale and Amy Feneck that questions dominant economic systems through collective self-education. Working with communities, they explore global political issues in relation to lived experience and use feminist and alternative economics as forms of resistance.The books listed here are texts that have informed their project The Neoliberal Imagination, which questions how the economic philosophy of neoliberalism affects our everyday lives and our capacity to imagine our world anew.

Download The Neoliberal Imagination reading list (pdf 434kb)  or see below:

Free to Choose, Milton & Rose Friedman(1980)

Capitalism and Freedom, Milton Friedman (1962)

The Road to Serfdom, Friedrich Hayek (1944)

The End of History, Francies Fukiyama (1992)

Thatcher and Thatcherism (The Making of the Contemporary World), Eric J Evans (1997)

Bullshit Jobs, David Graeber (2018)

The Enigma of Capital: And the Crises of Capitalism, David Harvey (2000)

Monsters of the Market: Zombies Vampires and Global Capitalism, David McNally (2011)

Soul at Work: From Alienation to Autonomy, Franco Bifo Berardi (2019)

How Did We Get Into This Mess?: Politics, Equality, Nature, George Monbiot (2016)

Carceral Capitalism, Jacky Wang (2018)

Neoliberal Culture, Jeremy Gilbert (2013)

Cruel Optimism, Lauren Berlant (2011)

Capitalist Realism, Mark Fisher (2009)

Ghosts of My Life: Writings on Depression, Hauntology and Lost Futures, Mark Fisher (2014)

The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, Naomi Klein (2007)

Dark Academia: How Universities Die, Peter Fleming (2021)

The Darker Side of Western Modernity, Walter Mignolo (2011)

Fortunes of Feminism, From State Managed Capitalism to Neoliberal Crisis, Nancy Fraser (2013)

In the Ruins of Neoliberalism: The Rise of Antidemocratic Politics in the West, Wendy Brown (2019)

On Freedom: Four Songs of Care and Constraint, Maggie Nelson (2021)

Doughnut Economics, Kate Raworth (2017)

The Value of Everything: Making and Taking in the Global Economy, Mariana Mazzucato (2017)

Economic Science Fictions, William Davies (2018)

Experiments in Imagining Otherwise, Lola Olufemi (2021)

The Care Manifesto: The Politics of Interdependence, Care Collective (2020)

The End of Capitalism (as We Knew It): A Feminist Critique of Political Economy, JK Gibson Graham (1996)

Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds, Adrienne Marie Brown (2017)

The Lathe of Heaven, Ursula K. Le Guin (1971)

The Fountainhead, Ayn Rand (1943)

Parable of the Sower, Octavia Butler (1993)

Lost Knowledge of the Imagination, Gary Lachman (2017)

Crises of Imagination, Crises of Power, Capitalism, Creativity and the Commons, Max Haiven (2014)

Unconscious Reasoning, Marcus Coates (2023)

Savage Messiah, Laura Oldfield Ford (2011)