The art of unpayable debts

Abstract

This chapter explores a dialectics of what the author terms unpayable debts that define the current financialized global capitalist paradigm. On the one hand, these are the widely acknowledged and profoundly influential debts of individuals, institutions and nation-states which are unlikely or impossible to repay, from subprime mortgages to the sovereign debt of nations like Greece (or even the US for that matter). On the other hand, unpayable debts refers to those unacknowledged, silenced or purposefully ignored debts for the atrocities and injustices that helped create this current financialized order, including reparations for the transatlantic slave trade, restitution of stolen Indigenous lands and recompense for colonial pillage and subjugation. These latter unpayable moral and political debts must be silenced, ignored or deligitimized in order for the former unpayable fiscal debts to have such power. To explore these tensions the author provides a contextual and aesthetic reading of three interventionist and performative public artworks: English artist Darren Cullen’s “Pocket Money Loans” (2012-present), Argentine artist Marta Minujín’s “Payment of Greek Debt to Germany with Olives and Art” (2017), and Anishinaabe artist Rebecca Belmore’s “Gone Indian” (2009).