8. Juli 2017
14.30–18.00
Gerald Nestler: The Derivative Condition. A Present Inquiry into the History of Futures
Künstlerisch-wissenschaftlicher Workshop 
Moderation: Maja Figge, Barbara Gronau 

Keywords: finance, derivatives, speculation, volatility, risk, contingency, promise, claim, market, art, aesthetics, resolution, leverage. 

The workshop engages with the notion of the derivative by exploring its position as a world-producing apparatus in and beyond contemporary finance. Nestler argues that the derivative paradigm by the power given to financial markets has effectively re-oriented not only markets but social relations as well. In its wake, claims to power have turned from representational to performative speech, with the result that we lack the intellectual and affective imagination to decipher and perceive what is deemed complex and abstract.

The workshop revisits the innovations that have reshaped financial markets since the 1970s in order to access their contemporary efficacy in shaping the space-times of the market, politics and sociality. It delineates the history of the derivative, its speculative leverage and the more recent turn from evaluating probabilities to manufacturing volatility. It will draw on finance, technology, science and social studies as well as offer perspectives on art in the derivative condition and a postdisciplinary counter-practice within an aesthetics of resolution.

Gerald Nestler ist Künstler und Autor. Er beschäftigt sich insbesondere mit Finanzmärkten und deren Rolle in der Erzeugung gesellschaftlicher Realität. In seiner Arbeit verbinden sich theoretische Überlegungen mit Video, Performance, Installation, Mapping, Text- und Gesprächsformen. Nestler promovierte am Centre for Research Architecture, Goldsmiths, University of London.
 
www.geraldnestler.net