Frances Negrón-Muntaner Lecture, in conversation with Katerina González Seligmann

Prof. Frances Negrón-Muntaner (Columbia University) will discuss the origins, impact, and future of the award-winning artivist project Valor y Cambio (Value/Valour and Change), in conversation with Prof. Katerina González Seligmann (University of Connecticut).

Starting in Puerto Rico in 2019, Valor y Cambio repurposed an old ATM to create an experience of a non-extractive economy by inventing a world where the central unit of economic value was storytelling. In exchange for a new currency that told stories that the artists valued, participants told a story of what they valued. Participants could, in turn, exchange their bills for goods and services with local vendors whose stories the project shared via social media. Designed to offer a space for people to think together and out loud about common challenges, the project emerged amidst Puerto Rico’s austerity crisis, which has impoverished the population and unleashed the archipelago’s largest migration. Valor y Cambio then moved to New York City, where it continued to spark a broad conversation about what is a just economy, how to foster collective empowerment in the face of austerity, and what are the roles of art, narrative, and technology in the process of building more equitable economies.

This event is co-sponsored by MIT Comparative Media Studies and Writing (CMSW), Art, Culture, and Technology (ACT) program at MIT, and MIT Institute Community and Equity Office (ICEO).

https://act.mit.edu/event/frances-negron-muntaner-valor-y-cambio/