Join us for a screening of Rehana Zaman’s film Alternative Economies (2021) followed by an open discussion with Shama Khanna, curator and founder of Flatness.
Made in collaboration with herbalist Rasheeqa Ahmad and financial services regulator Rachel Bardiger, Zaman’s film Alternative Economies relates the imperialist exploits of the Disney character Scrooge McDuck with the apparently radical yet deeply compromised promises of cryptocurrency. Between these two strands, possibilities for an alternative network of exchange and subsistence are sought.
Drawing upon the themes of alternative economic models, healing and solidarity suggested in Zaman’s film, Khanna leads an open group discussion to collectively imagine possibilities of (non-monetary) exchange.
No prior knowledge of the themes is required.
SHAMA KHANNA
Shama Khanna is an independent curator, writer and educator. They are the founder of Flatness, a long-running online platform for artists’ moving image and network culture invested in curating through a queer decolonial lens. They have collaborated with numerous publications and organisations internationally including documenta, Palais de Tokyo, Feminist Review, Nang, Art Monthly, Brent Biennial and Camden Arts Centre. Queer Diasporic Futurity edited by Flatness and developed in partnership with not/nowhere artist workers cooperative was published in July 2022. Currently, Flatness are curatorial residents at Forma HQ, London.
REHANA ZAMAN
Rehana Zaman is an artist living and working in London and before that from Heckmondwike, and before that from Pakistan and before that. Her work speaks to notions of kinship and sociality, seeking out possibilities of intimacy and transgression within hostile contexts. Conversation and cooperative methods sit at the heart of her films which extend into texts, performances and group work. She has exhibited widely in the UK and internationally. Recent presentations include Serpentine Projects (forthcoming), BEK – Bergen Centre for Electronic Arts, British Art Show 9 (Touring), ICA Miami, Trinity Square Video (Toronto), Borås International Sculpture Biennial (Sweden), Artist Film International Whitechapel (London and worldwide). In 2019 she co-edited Tongues with Taylor Le Melle, published by PSS and was shortlisted for the Film London Jarman Award. She is a member of not/nowhere artist workers cooperative and her films are distributed by LUX.
EXERCISES IN EXCHANGE
Exercises in Exchange is a series of public events and engagement activities concerned with alternative economies. Devised by Fiona Irene Graf, recipient of the 2023 Spike Island Engagement Fellowship for South West-based curators, Exercises in Exchange thinks through the possibilities of inter-mutual relationships and transboundary networks of reciprocity, asking how we can establish more nurturing, sustainable ways of being and interrelating within both human and non-human communities. In the face of ongoing economic and climate crises, the programme stresses the urgency to generate more equal economic structures based on kinship, collaboration and co-governance, and circularity.
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ACCESSIBILITY
This event is wheelchair accessible.