Forkonomy()
In response to this history of appropriation, Forkonomy() is an alternative council that queers our understanding of the commons by asking: “How can one buy or own a single milliliter of the South China Sea?” The project brought together diverse participants—including policymakers, scholars, marine conservationists, cultural workers, artists, and Indigenous activists—to critically examine the ownership of that one milliliter through discussions, auctions, contract deploying, and performance and code-based certifications.
In contemporary economical expansion, America federal and banks, giant tech corporations have managed to maintain their colonial forces to govern the accessibility and distribution of resources. The rise of China economic power, though operating in a different regime, also follows and adopts similar capitalistic, centralized and advanced (computable) machines, in which the invisible hand exploits ecologies and alienates labors. The economy trade bloc further demarcates the nowaday island states and territories of the Pacific.
However, many people have lived and traversed through the sea, between islands, coastlines, and cities for over two thousand years. Taiwan as the northeast Austronesians and Hong Kong 蜑家 Dang-Chia as “ocean peoples” viewed the world as “a sea of islands” rather than “places along the continent”. With the history and development of port infrastructure, it is not surprised that bartering and piracy on material and intangible wealth were the precursors to the monetary system.
Through Forkonomy(), we are interested in rethinking the politics of our contemporary economic and technical-cultural systems. By employing free and open source software and decentralized protocols, we set the participatory project as a commoning ship for people of the pacific who want to queer the matters of hierarchies, ownership, gendered labor division, as well as to fight against the constant threats of maintaining a high degree of autonomy regarding the land and the sea. Forknomy() shall sail the economy and autonomy into a queer ocean of freedom and the sea of commonwealth.
Links
Exhibition
2024 Unsettling the Algorithm, Beta Festival, curated by Nora MurchuConvergence, National Applied Research Lab, curated by Chi Po Hao
2023 Desert of Realities, ESC Medien Kunst Labor, Austria
2022 Direct Message, Artlaban and Mihakgwan, Seoul, South Korea
2021 Dear BlockChen, Solid Art Gallery, curated by Chu Feng Yi
2020Lab Kill Lab, Taiwan Contemporary Culture Lab, Annual Exhibition, curated by Shu Lea Cheang and Yukiko Shikata