There are many proposals for radical economies from progressive economists, activists and think tanks. Artists are increasingly joining these debates with speculative proposals and unconventional methodologies. I will explore three art projects here that approach the economies of caring labor, agricultural and social production on farms, and forests, with an artistic spin. Driven by artistic curiosity but not shying away from addressing systemic issues, these projects help us open the scope of our discussions by engaging with diverse social actors.
ReUnion
The ReUnion network is a design prototype for a socio-economic ecosystem that helps people organize bottom-up social support through long-term P2P (peer to peer) care agreements. Driven by the question of how society would be organized if decentralized, ReUnion approaches interpersonal relationships as the base unit of a commons-based socio-economic system.
Care is a problem of our societies in its increasing scarcity and reliance on marketized solutions. At the same time, it is a form of labor that demands a qualitative effort within trusted, often long-term relationships. Identifying intertwined trends in socioeconomic and cultural contexts, such as surging nomadic workforces, the gig economy and mass burnout, as well as the aging society and the decline of the nuclear family, ReUnion tries to reimagine how people can organize their personal lives and form social units born of new kinships.
